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A priest invites quantum physicist Professor Howard Birack and his students to join him in the basement of a monastery belonging to "The Brotherhood of Sleep", an old order who communicate through dreams. The priest requires their assistance in investigating a mysterious cylinder containing a swirling green liquid. Among the thirteen academics present are wise-cracking Walter, demure Kelly, and lovers Brian Marsh and Catherine Danforth. They decipher text found next to the cylinder which describes the liquid as the corporeal embodiment of Satan. The liquid appears sentient. The academics use a computer to analyze the books surrounding it, and find that they included differential equations. Over a period of two days, small jets of liquid escape from the cylinder. Members of the group exposed to the liquid become possessed by the entity and attack the others. Anyone attempting to leave is killed by the growing mass of enthralled schizophrenic homeless people who surround the building. Birack and the priest theorize that Satan is actually the offspring of an even more powerful force of evil, the "Anti-God", who is bound to the realm of anti-matter. The survivors find themselves sharing a recurring dream (apparently a tachyon transmission sent as a warning from the future year "one-nine-nine-nine" also known as 1999) showing a shadowy figure emerging from the front of the church. The hazy transmission changes slightly with each occurrence of the dream, revealing progressively more detail. The narration of the transmission each time instructs the dreamer that they are witnessing an actual broadcast from the future, and they must prevent this possible outcome. Walter, trapped in a closet, witnesses the possessed bring the cylinder to a sleeping Kelly. It opens itself and the remaining liquid absorbs into Kelly, transforming her into the physical vessel of Satan: a gruesomely disfigured being, with powers of telekinesis and regeneration. Kelly attempts to summon the Anti-God through a dimensional portal using a mirror, but the mirror is too small and the effort fails. While the rest of the team is occupied fighting the possessed, Kelly finds a larger wall mirror and draws the Anti-God's hand through it. Danforth, the only one free to act, tackles Kelly, causing both of them to fall through the portal. The priest then shatters the mirror with an axe, trapping Kelly, the Anti-God, and Danforth in the other realm. Danforth is seen briefly on the other side of the mirror reaching out to the portal before it closes. Immediately, the possessed die, the street people wander away, and the survivors (Marsh, Walter, Birack, and the priest) are rescued. Marsh has the recurring dream again, except now Danforth (apparently possessed) is the figure emerging from the church. Marsh awakens and finds Kelly, gruesomely disfigured, lying in bed with him. This is shown to be another dream, and he awakens screaming. Rising, he approaches his bedroom mirror, hand outstretched. 

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The first part of the book covers the 17 years in the lives of this group of friends after Karen's lapse into a coma. Richard has to cope with losing Karen but gaining a daughter, Megan, as fatherhood is thrust upon him: the outcome of their mutual loss of virginity just hours before Karen fell into her coma. Wendy throws herself into work and Linus loses himself, looking for that which is lost. Pamela becomes a supermodel and Hamilton a demolition expert, but none of the friends' lives turn out how they imagined. Broken and lacking, they return to the suburbs of their youth to try to pull themselves together until one day, almost two decades after she fell asleep, Karen regains consciousness. The book is divided into three parts. The first chapter of the book is narrated by Jared, the ghost of a friend of the characters who died of leukemia at a young age. The rest of Part 1 is narrated by Richard, in the first person, as he tells the story of what happened in the 17 years. The second part of the book, with no narrator, deals with Karen's return to the world. It also begins to explain where she had been all those years and the reality she had hoped to escape. Then, suddenly, the world ends. This section is narrated in the third person, with insight into all the characters' minds. The final part of the book details life after everyone except these seven people have fallen asleep and not reawakened. This section is again narrated by Jared. The characters have to deal with the end of the world as predicted by Karen in her coma. 

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Set in between the events of Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992), Sonic CD opens with Sonic journeying to Never Lake, where an extraterrestrial body, Little Planet, appears on the last month of every year. Sonic's nemesis Dr. Robotnik has tethered the planet to a mountain and begun transforming it into a giant fortress with his robot army. Robotnik seeks the Time Stones, seven jewels capable of altering the passage of time. Sonic ventures into the planet, followed by the besotted Amy Rose, his self-proclaimed girlfriend. Robotnik dispatches his top robotic enforcer, Metal Sonic, who kidnaps Amy to lure Sonic into danger. Sonic clashes with Robotnik and Metal Sonic and uses time travel to stop Robotnik. After racing and defeating Metal Sonic in Stardust Speedway and saving Amy, Sonic fights and defeats Robotnik in his base. Two endings exist, depending on whether or not the player collected the Time Stones or achieved a good future in each level. In one ending, Little Planet is returned to its rightful state and leaves Never Lake; in the other, Little Planet leaves Never Lake, but Robotnik uses the Time Stones to retake it. When the planet reappears at the lake, Sonic returns, determined to save it. 

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Mark Evans is a boy whose mother, Janice, has recently died. Mark's father, Jack, is about to leave for a business trip, so he takes him to Maine to spend his winter break with his aunt, Susan, and his uncle, Wallace. Mark meets his cousins, Connie and Henry. However, Henry displays a fascination with death, as he talks to Mark about the deaths of Janice and his younger brother, Richard, which makes Mark feel uncomfortable. Henry also begins to display psychopathic behavior, which Mark doesn't tell to Susan and Wallace, as Henry threatens him. When Henry plans to kill Connie, Mark spends the night in her room. The next morning, Mark finds Henry has taken Connie ice skating, where he purposely throws her towards thin ice, which collapses, causing Connie to fall in. Connie nearly drowns, but is rescued and taken to a hospital. Susan starts to become suspicious and finds a rubber ducky that belonged to Richard and was with him when he drowned. Susan confronts Henry, who tells her that it belonged to him first and asks for it back, but Susan refuses. Henry then takes it, runs to a cemetery, and throws it down a well. A fight breaks out between Mark and Henry, causing Wallace to lock Mark in their den. Henry takes Susan for a walk, while Mark escapes and chases after them. Susan confronts Henry, asking him if he killed Richard, which Henry confesses to. Susan tells Henry that he needs help, but Henry runs away to a cliff and Susan follows. When Susan gets to the cliff, Henry pushes her off, but she grabs onto the edge. Henry prepares to kill Susan by dropping a rock on her, but Mark tackles him and they fight while Susan pulls herself up. Susan grabs hold of Mark and Henry as they roll off. With only enough strength to save one of them, Susan reluctantly lets go of Henry and he falls to his death. When Mark returns home, he thinks about Susan's choice to save him instead of Henry, wonders if she would make the same choice again, and knows that he will never ask her that. 

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In 1860, during the final years of the Edo period and the demise of the Tokugawa shogunate, a rōnin wanders through a desolate Japanese countryside. While stopping at a farmhouse, he overhears an elderly couple lamenting that their only son has given up farm labouring in order to run off and join the rogues who have descended on a nearby town that has become divided by a gang war. The stranger heads to the town where he meets Gonji, the owner of a small izakaya who advises him to leave. He tells the rōnin that the two warring clans are led by Ushitora and Seibei; Ushitora was the right- hand man of Seibei but rebelled when Seibei decided to hand over the reins to his son Yoichiro, a useless youth. The town's mayor, a silk merchant named Tazaemon, had long been in Seibei's pocket, and Ushitora aligned himself with the local sake brewer, Tokuemon, proclaiming him the new mayor. After sizing up the situation, the stranger says he intends to stay, as the town would be better off with both sides dead. He first convinces the weaker Seibei to hire him as a swordsman by effortlessly killing three of Ushitora's men. When asked his name, he sees a mulberry field and states his name is Kuwabatake Sanjuro (), where Kuwabatake = "mulberry field" and where Sanjuro ("thirty-years- old"). Seibei decides that with the ronin's swordsmanship, the time is right to fight Ushitora. However, Sanjuro eavesdrops on Seibei's wife, who orders her son to kill him after the upcoming raid so that they will not have to pay his large fee. Sanjuro leads the attack on the other faction, but then "resigns", leaving Seibei to his fate. Before the two sides clash, the unexpected arrival of a bugyō (a government official) forces both sides to make a bloodless retreat and cease their war. Eventually the bugyō is called away because a government official has been murdered in another town. Sanjuro soon learns two assassins hired by Ushitora committed the murder to get the official to leave. With this knowledge, Sanjuro captures the killers and sells them to Seibei, but then tells Ushitora that it was Seibei's men who caught them. An alarmed Ushitora rewards him generously for his help. Ushitora then orders the kidnapping of Seibei's son, whom he offers in exchange for the two prisoners. However, Ushitora double crosses Seibei at the swap when his brother, Unosuke, shoots the assassins with a pistol; anticipating a betrayal, Seibei kidnaps Ushitora’s mistress. The next morning, she is exchanged for Seibei's son. Sanjuro learns that the woman, Nui, is the wife of a local farmer who lost her to Ushitora over a gambling debt, who then gave her away as chattel to Tokuemon in order to gain his support. Sanjuro tricks Ushitora into revealing the place where Nui is hidden, then kills the guards and reunites the woman with her husband and son and tells them to leave town immediately. Pretending to be on Ushitora's side, Sanjuro is able to convince Ushitora that the woman was kidnapped by Seibei's men. The gang war escalates, with Ushitora burning down Tazaemon's silk warehouse and Seibei retaliating by trashing Tokuemon's brewery. After some time, Unosuke becomes suspicious of Sanjuro and the circumstances surrounding Nui's escape, eventually uncovering evidence of the ronin's betrayal. Sanjuro is severely beaten and imprisoned by Ushitora's thugs, who torture him to find out Nui's whereabouts. Sanjuro manages to escape when Ushitora decides to eliminate Seibei once and for all. As he is being smuggled out of town in a coffin by Gonji, he witnesses the brutal end of Seibei, his family, and his clan. Sanjuro recuperates in a small temple near a cemetery. However, when he learns that Gonji has been captured by Ushitora, he returns to town. Sanjuro confronts Ushitora, Unosuke and their men, taking on all of them by himself in a duel and killing them easily. He spares only one terrified young man, who turns out to be the youth he met on the way into town, and sends him back to his parents. As Sanjuro surveys the damage, Tazaemon comes out of his home, in a samurai outfit and beating a prayer drum. Driven mad, he circles around town and then goes after Tokuemon, stabbing him to death. Sanjuro frees Gonji, proclaims that the town will be quiet from then on, and departs. 

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This novel tells the story of Oskar Schindler, self-made entrepreneur and bon viveur who almost by default found himself saving Polish Jews from the Nazi death machine. Based on numerous eyewitness accounts, Keneally's story is unbearably moving but never melodramatic, a testament to the almost unimaginable horrors of Hitler's attempts to make Europe judenfrei (free of Jews). What distinguishes Schindler in Keneally's version is not, superficially, kindness or idealism, but a certain gusto. He was a flawed hero; he was not "without sin". He was a drinker, a womaniser and, at first, a profiteer. After the war, he was commemorated as Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, but was never seen as a conventionally virtuous character. The story is not only Schindler's, it is the story of Kraków's Ghetto and the forced labour camp outside town, Płaszów. It is the story of Amon Göth, Płaszów's commandant. His wife Emilie Schindler later remarked in a German TV interview that Schindler did nothing remarkable before the war and nothing after it. "He was fortunate therefore that in the short fierce era between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who had summoned forth his deeper talents." After the war, his business ventures failed and he separated from his wife. Then he ended up living a shabby life in a small flat in Frankfurt. Eventually he arranged to live part of the year in Israel, supported by his Jewish friends, and part of the year as a sort of internal émigré in Frankfurt, where he was often hissed at in the streets as a traitor to his "race". After 29 unexceptional postwar years he died in 1974. He was buried in Jerusalem as he wished with the help of his old friend Pfefferberg. 

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A unicorn learns from two hunters and a butterfly that she is the last of her kind since a Red Bull has herded unicorns to the ends of the earth. The Unicorn journeys to find them. The Unicorn is captured by the witch Mommy Fortuna and displayed in her Midnight Carnival. Most of the attractions are normal animals enhanced by illusions to appear as mythical beasts. Fortuna uses a spell to create another horn on the unicorn's head, as the carnival visitors cannot see her real form. Fortuna keeps the immortal harpy Celaeno captive as well, deeming the risk secondary to the deed's prestige. The unicorn is befriended by Schmendrick, an incompetent magician in the service of Mommy Fortuna. With the help of Schmendrick, the Unicorn escapes, in the process freeing Celaeno, who kills Fortuna. The Unicorn and Schmendrick gain a second traveling companion with Molly Grue, the careworn lover of Captain Cully (the disappointing reality behind the Robin Hood legend). When the Unicorn nears the seaside castle of King Haggard, keeper of the Red Bull, she encounters the beast, a monstrous fire elemental. Before she can be captured, Schmendrick uses his unpredictable magic, transforming her into a woman. The Red Bull becomes uninterested in her and departs, but the Unicorn is shocked by the sensation of mortality. Schmendrick promises to return her to normal after the quest is complete. Schmendrick, Molly Grue, and the now-human Unicorn proceed to the castle. Haggard is at first unwelcoming. Schmendrick introduces the Unicorn as Lady Amalthea, and requests that they become members of Haggard's court, only to be told that the only occupants of the castle are Haggard, his adopted son Prince Lír and four ancient men-at-arms. Haggard consents to lodge the trio, replacing his more competent wizard, Mabruk, with Schmendrick, and setting Molly Grue to work in his scullery. Mabruk leaves after recognizing "Amalthea" for what she truly is, jeering that by allowing her into his castle Haggard has invited his doom. Due to her new human emotions, Amalthea begins forgetting her true self and falls in love with Prince Lír, and considers abandoning her quest in favor of mortal love. Haggard confronts Amalthea, hinting at the location of the unicorns, yet from the waning magic in her eyes, has doubts regarding his suspicions that she is more than she seems. Molly finally learns the location of the Red Bull's lair from the castle's cat. Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea are joined by Lír as they enter the bull's den, and are trapped there by Haggard. Schmendrick explains to Lír what they are looking for and reveals Amalthea's true identity. Lír declares that he loves her anyway. This makes Amalthea want to abandon the quest and marry Lír, but Lír dissuades her. The Red Bull appears, no longer deceived by Amalthea's human form, and chases after her. Schmendrick turns Amalthea back into the Unicorn, but she is unwilling to leave Lír's side. The Bull begins driving her toward the ocean just as he had driven the other unicorns. Lír tries defending her, but is killed by the bull. Enraged, the Unicorn turns on the Bull and forces him into the sea. Carried on the incoming tides, the other unicorns emerge from the water. With their release, Haggard's castle collapses into the sea, and Haggard, watching all from the battlements, falls to his death. On the beach, the Unicorn magically revives Lír before she leaves him. Schmendrick assures Lír he gained much by winning the love of a unicorn, even if he is now alone. The Unicorn later says goodbye to Schmendrick, who laments he wronged her by burdening her with regret and the taint of mortality, which could make her unable to properly rejoin her kind. She disagrees about the importance of his actions, as they helped restore unicorns to the world and made her experience love. Schmendrick and Molly watch the Unicorn depart for her home. 

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Three married men, George (Tony Randall), Doug (Howard Duff), and Howie (Howard Morris), and divorcé Fred (James Garner) are friends who commute to work from Greenwich, Connecticut, to New York City on the same train. Seeing Fred's philandering boss, Mr. Bingham (Larry Keating), with his mistress sets the men to fantasizing about sharing the expense of an apartment in the city as a love nest. As a gag, they give Fred the task of finding an unrealistically inexpensive apartment and a blonde "companion" to go with it. Fred rents a luxurious suite from Peter Bowers (Jim Backus), who is desperate to find a tenant because the previous occupant was a highly publicized murder victim. By chance, Cathy (Kim Novak), a knockout of a blonde, also answers the advertisement for the apartment. Fred explains that the place has already been taken, but that he is also looking for a beautiful young "housekeeper" for his friends. To his surprise, she accepts the job. The boys are delighted; each tells his wife that he is taking a course one night a week to improve his mind so he can stay in New York overnight. Unbeknownst to the men, Cathy is actually a sociology graduate student writing her thesis on the "adolescent fantasies of the adult suburban male." Her skeptical advisor, Dr. Prokosch (Oskar Homolka), objects, "Can you look like 'yes' and act like 'no?' ... This a nice girl hasn't learned." Cathy responds, "No? This is what a nice girl has learned best." When they start calling on her individually in the evenings, she encourages them to talk, all the while secretly recording their conversations. Cathy deftly avoids being seduced by the married men, although each lets the others think he has slept with her. She supplies what each one really wants: Howie is starved for more substantial food than his dieting wife will provide; Doug likes to repair things that are conveniently broken each week (his status-conscious wife does not want their neighbors to see him tinkering about the house); George enjoys talking about himself, but his spouse keeps finishing his sentences. Fred, however, is a different story: he is very attracted to Cathy and, disgusted by his friends' fabricated stories, refuses to use his night. In the end the wives become suspicious, and on the advice of Fred's mother, Ethel (Jessie Royce Landis), hire private investigator Ernest Bohannon (Fred Clark) to find out what is going on. Based on his report, they assume the worst and confront their husbands. All three married men confess that nothing happened, and Cathy reveals that she is just doing research. After getting over the shock, Fred and Cathy become a couple, and the boys' night out is no more; instead, the four couples go out together. 

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Players assume the role of Jack the WorldRunner, a wild "space cowboy" on a mission to save various planets overrun by serpentine beasts. The game takes place in Solar System #517, which is being overrun by a race of aliens known as Serpentbeasts, who are led by the evil Grax. As WorldRunner, the player must battle through eight planets to find and destroy Grax with fireballs. 

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Johnny Van Owen is a rapper who drifts from city to city. Johnny is performing at a nightclub, rapping and dancing with his crew and a club background songstress playing "Cool as Ice (Everybody Get Loose)". While the group passes through a small town, Johnny falls for honor student Kathy Winslow. The crew is stranded in the town after a member's motorcycle breaks down and has to be left at a local repair shop. While waiting for repairs, Johnny uses the opportunity to see Kathy. She already has a boyfriend named Nick, whom he advises Kathy to dump. Johnny shows up with his crew at a local club frequented by Kathy and her friends. Noticing that no one was enjoying the live music playing at the club, Johnny and the crew decide to perform a musical number, "People's Choice", by unplugging the other band's instruments and taking control, shocking the audience and ending with Johnny sweeping Kathy off her feet, humiliating Nick. He offers to forgive Kathy and take her home, but she refuses and walks home by herself. Unbeknownst to Kathy, she is stalked by two strange men in a car. She is saved by Johnny, who takes her home. At the club's parking lot, a jealous Nick and his friends smash up motorcycles belonging to Johnny's friends. Nick's friends attack the rapping biker who fights back, leaving Nick and his buddies unconscious and Nick himself in the hospital with a broken nose. Kathy's father, Gordon, becomes suspicious of Johnny, and warns Kathy to stay away from him because they can't trust strangers. The next day, Kathy goes for a ride with Johnny against her father's wishes. They ride all over town, including a construction site. When they finally return home, they are greeted by an angry Gordon, who coldly warns Johnny to stay away from his daughter. Gordon, under pressure from his wife Grace, reveals to Kathy the secret of his past—he was once a police officer. They were on the run from two corrupt cops and were able to escape using fabricated documents, explaining why he kept his life a secret from Kathy all these years. Kathy criticizes her father, saying it was not fair that he lied to her in order to protect her, yet refuse to permit her to see a total stranger. The next day, Johnny agrees to give Tommy, Kathy's younger brother, a ride on his bike. They cruise through the streets, and finally back to the Winslow home, where Tommy is later kidnapped. At the repair shop, the crew prepares to leave town since the bike has been repaired, but they tell Johnny to say goodbye to Kathy. When Johnny arrives at the Winslow house, he finds an envelope meant for the family. It turns out to be a message from the crooked cops with Tommy recording it. Fearing the worst, Gordon accuses Johnny of criminal involvement, much to Kathy's dismay. When Kathy asks Johnny to play the tape left behind by the kidnappers, he hears a loud clanging noise from a construction vehicle, revealing the message was recorded at the construction site. The gang ambushes the kidnappers and rescue Tommy. When the police arrive, the gang return Tommy to the Winslows, and Gordon apologizes to Johnny. The rapper tells Kathy he has to move on, but she decides to follow him. Nick arrives in his car, telling Kathy to get used to being a biker chick because she will never see him again. Kathy holds on as Johnny uses the car as a ramp and the two new lovers ride off into the big city. The film ends with Johnny reaching his destination, rapping "Get Wit It" and dancing with his crew to an audience at a night club. Kathy joins him on stage after the show is over, dancing alone in the spotlight. 

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In 1982, Pope John Paul II privately issues a letter to the communist Polish government, stating that he will resign from the papacy and return to his hometown unless they cease their repression of counterrevolutionary movements in Poland, particularly the Solidarity trade union. Called the Warsaw Letter, it was later forwarded to Moscow, enraging Committee for State Security (KGB) director Yuri Andropov. He decides to plan for the pope’s assassination, which he believes would reinvigorate Communism in Eastern Europe, perceived by many to be in a state of decline. Known only by its designated number 15-8-82-666 for security reasons, the assassin is then selected as a Turk Muslim (understood to be Mehmet Ali Agca), who would then be eliminated by Bulgarian KDS officer Boris Strokov afterwards for deniability. The operation was later unanimously approved by the Politburo. Meanwhile, Oleg Zaitzev, a communications officer in the KGB tasked with sending and receiving encrypted dispatches to and from KGB stations across Europe, pieces together the plot to kill the pope, and becomes deeply troubled with the prospect of murdering an innocent person for political purposes. He later decides to make contact with the local CIA station chief Edward Foley as well as his wife and agent Mary Pat, intending to defect and then be extracted out of the Soviet Union with his family, in exchange for providing information on the assassination plot as well as the names of KGB deep-penetration agents in the American and British governments. The Foleys instruct Zaitzev to bring his family to Budapest, Hungary under the guise of taking a vacation. They are then to be assisted by British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) officers stationed in the city, because the CIA station there was compromised; as a result, Jack Ryan, former Marine and the CIA liaison to SIS back in London, was sent there to represent the agency. One early morning, the Zaitzevs were spirited out of the hotel they were staying. Accompanied by Ryan, they are then smuggled to Yugoslavia, where they immediately fly to the United Kingdom. By then, SIS agents had planted dead bodies that are physically identical to the family into their hotel room, which was then set on fire, thus deceiving the KGB. After settling down in a safehouse outside Manchester, Zaitzev reveals what he knows about the assassination plot, which alarms the SIS and the CIA. Ryan was later sent to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to accompany the British SIS officers on the ground to ascertain how the hit on the pope will play out, as well as to try capturing the shooter. At the pope’s weekly audience, Ryan manages to capture Strokov; however, the Pope gets shot anyway by the real shooter Agca. Nevertheless, the pontiff recovers from his wounds. It was then revealed that Strokov was executed by the British as retaliation for murdering Soviet defector Georgi Markov on British soil four years ago. 

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The original show starred Dennis Waterman as Terry McCann, an honest and likeable bodyguard (minder in London slang) and George Cole as Arthur Daley, a socially ambitious, but highly unscrupulous importer-exporter, wholesaler, used-car salesman and purveyor of anything else from which there was money to be made, whether within the law or not. The series is principally set in inner west London (Shepherd's Bush/Ladbroke Grove/Fulham/Acton), and was largely responsible for putting the word minder, meaning personal bodyguard, into the UK popular lexicon. The characters often drank at the local members-only Winchester Club, where owner and barman Dave Harris (Glynn Edwards) acted, often unwillingly, as a message service for Arthur, and turned a blind eye to his shady deals. Like many British sitcoms, the show is set firmly within a certain social class, in this case working class west London. It shares strong similarities with Only Fools and Horses and Steptoe and Son in the sense that much of the storyline revolves around a dysfunctional, co-dependent relationship between the two protagonists. In the case of Minder, they are not family members but friends. These relationships are marked by the older person (Arthur, Del Boy, Albert Steptoe) controlling and frustrating the life of his younger, dimmer counterpart (Terry, Rodney, Harold Steptoe). In each case of both Only Fools and Horses and Minder, this older character is also the sharp, aspirant dreamer whereas in Steptoe and Son, Harold is aspirant dreamer trapped by his lot having to inherit the family business. 

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Teresa, the pregnant teenage daughter of a powerful Mexican crime lord known only as (), is summoned before her father and interrogated as to the identity of her unborn child's father. Under torture, she identifies the father as Alfredo Garcia, whom El Jefe had been grooming to be his successor. Infuriated, El Jefe offers a $1 million bounty to whoever will "bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia". The search progresses for two months. In Mexico City, a pair of business suit-clad, dispassionate hit men, Sappensly (Robert Webber) and Quill (Gig Young), enter a saloon and encounter Bennie (Warren Oates), a retired U.S. Army officer who makes a meager living as a piano player and bar manager. The men ask about Garcia, believing they will have more luck getting answers out of a fellow American. Bennie plays dumb, saying the name is familiar but he doesn't know who Garcia is. It turns out that everyone in the bar knows who Garcia is; they simply don't know where he is. Bennie goes to meet his girlfriend, Elita (Isela Vega), a maid at a ghetto motel. Elita admits to having cheated on Bennie with Garcia, who had professed his love for her, something Bennie refuses to do. Elita informs him that Garcia died in a drunk-driving accident the previous week. Excited by the possibility of making money by simply digging up the body, Bennie goes to Sappensly and Quill in the hotel room of the man who hired them, El Jefe's business associate Max (Helmut Dantine), and makes a deal for US$10,000 for Garcia's head, plus a US$200 advance for expenses. Bennie convinces Elita to go on a road trip with him to visit Garcia's grave, claiming that he only wants proof that Garcia is in fact dead and no longer a threat to their relationship. En route, Bennie proposes, promising that their future will soon change, and she can retire from her cleaning job. Elita warns Bennie against trying to upset their status quo. While having a picnic, Bennie and Elita are accosted by two bikers, who pull guns and decide to rape Elita. Bennie seems unsure how to react. Elita agrees to have sex with the bikers if they spare Bennie's life, then goes off with one of them (Kris Kristofferson). He rips off her shirt, lets her slap him twice, slaps her back, then walks away; she follows. Bennie knocks the second biker (Donnie Fritts) unconscious, takes his gun and finds Elita about to have sex with the first biker. Bennie shoots him dead and kills the second biker as well. Bennie confesses to Elita his plan to decapitate Garcia's corpse and sell the head for money. A disgusted Elita, still shaken from what has just happened, begs Bennie to give up this quest and return to Mexico City, where they can be married and live a modest life of relative peace. Bennie again refuses, although he agrees to marry Elita in the church of the town where Garcia is buried. They find Garcia's grave, but when he opens the coffin, Bennie is struck from behind with his shovel by an unseen assailant. He wakes up to find himself half-buried in the grave with Elita, who is dead. The corpse of Garcia has been decapitated. Bennie learns from villagers that his assailants are driving a station wagon. He catches up with the men after they blow out a tire. Bennie shoots them, searches their car, and claims Garcia's head. Stopping at a roadside restaurant, he packs the sack containing the head with ice to preserve it for the journey home. Bennie begins addressing the head as if Garcia were still alive, first blaming Alfredo for Elita's death and then conceding that both of them probably loved her equally. Bennie is ambushed by members of Garcia's family. They reclaim the head and are about to kill Bennie when they are interrupted by the arrival of Sappensly and Quill. The hit men pretend to ask for directions. Quill produces a sub-machine gun and murders most of the family, but is fatally shot by one of them. As Sappensly sorrowfully looks at Quill's corpse, Bennie asks: "Do I get paid?" Sappensly turns to shoot, but Bennie kills him. Bennie returns to Mexico City, "arguing" with Garcia's head all the while. At his apartment, Bennie gives Garcia's head a shower and then brings it to Max's hotel room. Feigning willingness to surrender the head for his $10,000, Bennie reveals he is no longer motivated by money; he says Alfredo was a friend of his and demands to know why Max and the others want his head so badly. He also blames Elita's death on the bounty and intends to kill everyone involved. Several men pull guns, but Bennie manages to evade fire and kill them all. He takes a business card from the desk with El Jefe's address on it. After attending the baptism for his new grandchild, El Jefe greets Bennie as a hero in his hacienda and gives him a briefcase containing the promised million-dollar bounty. Bennie calmly relates how many people died for Garcia's head, including his beloved. El Jefe responds apathetically, telling Bennie to take his money and throw the head to the pigs on the way out. Infuriated that the object responsible for Elita's death is viewed as nothing more than garbage, Bennie guns down all of El Jefe's bodyguards. Teresa enters with her newborn son, causing Bennie to hesitate shooting El Jefe. She tersely urges Bennie to kill her father. Bennie obliges and leaves El Jefe's hacienda together with Teresa, taking along Garcia's head. They approach the entrance gate and Bennie says goodbye to Teresa, departing the scene with the words: "You take care of the boy. And I'll take care of the father". Bennie drives away, only to be killed by El Jefe's men, their machine guns tearing him to pieces. 

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In 1938, Dutch mystery writer Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre) is visiting Istanbul. A fan of his, Colonel Haki (Kurt Katch) of the Turkish police, believes Leyden would be interested in the story of Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott), whose body was just washed up on the beach. Leyden is so fascinated by what Haki tells of the dead criminal that he becomes determined to learn more. He seeks out Dimitrios' associates all over Europe, none of whom has a kind word for the deceased. They reveal more of the man's sordid life. His ex-lover, Irana Preveza (Faye Emerson), tells of his failed assassination attempt. Afterwards, he borrowed money from her and never returned. On his travels, Leyden meets Mr. Peters (Sydney Greenstreet). Later, he catches Peters ransacking his hotel room. Peters reveals that he too had dealings with Dimitrios (he had done prison time when Dimitrios betrayed their smuggling ring to the police), and he is not convinced that the man is really dead. If he is alive, Peters plans to blackmail him for keeping his secret. He generously offers Leyden a share, but the Dutchman is interested only in learning the truth. Wladislaw Grodek (Victor Francen) is the next link in the trail. He had hired Dimitrios to obtain some state secrets. Dimitrios manipulated Karel Bulic (Steven Geray), a meek, minor Yugoslav government official, into gambling and losing a huge sum, so he could be pressured into stealing charts of some minefields. Bulic later confessed to the authorities and committed suicide. Meanwhile, Dimitrios double-crossed Grodek, selling the charts himself to the Italian government. Eventually, the two men track Dimitrios down in Paris. Fearful of being exposed to the authorities, he pays Peters one million francs for his silence but, true to his nature, goes to Peters' home shortly thereafter and shoots him. Leyden, his rage over Peters being shot overcoming his fear, grapples with Dimitrios, allowing the wounded Peters to grab the gun. Peters sends Leyden away to spare him from witnessing the violence to come; then shots are heard. When the police show up, Peters admits to shooting Dimitrios and does not resist arrest, satisfied with what he has accomplished. As he is taken away, he asks that Leyden write a book about the affair, and to kindly send him a copy. 

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Jack Elliot is an aging American baseball player unsuspectingly put on the trading block during Spring Training in 1992 by the New York Yankees in favor of "rookie phenom" first baseman Ricky Davis (played by Hall of Famer Frank Thomas), and there's only one taker: the Nagoya Chunichi Dragons of Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball. Upon arrival in Japan, Elliot clashes with the Japanese culture and the team's manager, and before long he alienates his new teammates. He believes the rules and management style of his new skipper, Uchiyama (Ken Takakura), are ludicrous, and continues to do things his way, which leads his already dwindling performance to suffer even more. His only ally on the team is another American ballplayer, Max "Hammer" Dubois (Dennis Haysbert), with whom he commiserates about his frustrations. However, Max is a team player on the Dragons, and warns Elliot to be one too. At the same time, Elliot develops a relationship with the beautiful Hiroko (Aya Takanashi), who is, he later learns, Uchiyama's daughter. After one too many outbursts, including knocking out his interpreter during a brawl, Elliot is suspended from play. After meeting Hiroko's family, including Uchiyama, Uchiyama admits to Jack that he hired him over the objections of management and now his own career, not just Jack's, is in jeopardy. Dragon's management wanted Pete Clifton from Boston, but Uchiyama pulled some strings with management to pick Jack, because he was the right choice to turn this team around. After hearing this, Elliot swallows his pride and admits his deficiencies. Uchiyama becomes his mentor. In a rare show of humility, he apologizes to the team in Japanese, erroneously saying he wants to build a rather than a of friendship (the words are homophones but stressed differently) and the team rallies around him and teaches him the value of sportsmanship and respect for hard work. Uchiyama lifts his suspension and begins to work with Elliot on improving his play. The reinvigorated Elliot's enthusiasm for team play is contagious and the mediocre Dragons become contenders for the Central League pennant. In the process, he also utilizes a Japanese tradition of being able to tell off Uchiyama while intoxicated to convince him to encourage his players to be more aggressive and "have a little fun." Eventually, Elliot gets the opportunity to break Uchiyama's record of seven consecutive games with a home run, but not before his positive response to a call from his American agent complicates his relationship with Hiroko. His newfound respect for team play becomes apparent in a crucial game against the Yomiuri Giants. With the bases loaded, two outs and his team down 6–5, the team brass expects Uchiyama to signal for a bunt to try to tie the game, even though it would deny Elliot the chance to break the home run record. Elliot goes to Uchiyama and asks if he read the sign correctly. Uchiyama nods and tells him to swing away, knowing that a home run would break his record. Elliot takes a called strike one with a questionable call on the first pitch. Elliot fouls the second pitch back. Faced with a no- ball, two-strike count, Elliot sees the Giants' infield is playing deep and bunts. The Giants are caught off-guard and the bunt is successful in allowing the tying run to cross home plate. As the Giants struggle to field the ball, Elliot, approaching first base, veers slightly inside the baseline and knocks over the Giants' pitcher covering first on the play, which allows the winning run to score from second base. With the Dragons winning the pennant, Uchiyama can keep his job and Max ends his five-year career in NPB by signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Elliot, who marries Hiroko, becomes a coach and mentor with the Detroit Tigers. The movie ends with one of the players calling him Chief, which is the same as he called Uchiyama in Japan. 

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In the summer of 1935, identical twins Holland and Niles Perry enjoy playing on their family farm. Earlier in the year the boys' father died in an accident in the apple cellar, leaving their mother deeply melancholic and agoraphobic. Instead the farm is looked after by their father's brother George and his wife Vee, along with their bratty son Russell. Also residing nearby are the twins' pregnant older sister Torrie, her new husband Rider, and their Russian emigrant grandmother Ada, with whom Niles shares an especially close relationship. Ada has taught Niles to astrally project his mind into the bodies of other living creatures, an ability that runs in the Perry family; they refer to this as "the great game." Though the apple cellar is off-limits after their father's death, the twins enjoy playing there. One day while playing in the cellar, they are discovered by Russell, who sees that Niles is wearing the Perry family ring. Russell threatens to tell on him for having the ring, which he says was supposed to be buried. Holland tells Niles that the ring is always passed from eldest son to eldest son, and that after the death of their father, Holland (the elder twin by 20 minutes) came to possess the ring and can do whatever he likes with it, including giving it to Niles. Niles hides the ring, along with other secret trinkets, in a Prince Albert tin he conceals from his mother. Uncle George puts a padlock on the apple cellar to keep the twins out, but Holland knows a secret stairway from the barn that allows them access. In revenge for Russell tattling about the cellar, and to prevent him from telling about the ring, Holland hides a pitchfork in a haystack in the barn. While Niles is playing "the game" with Ada, Russell jumps into the haystack and is impaled. Niles is horrified, but keeps his brother's secret. Earlier, Niles and Holland sneak into the barn their neighbor Mrs. Rowe and try to steal some preserves, but a jar drops and is broken, causing her to scold Niles (whom she mistakes for Holland) and report him to Ada. Holland takes revenge on Mrs. Rowe by frightening her with a live rat, knowing that she is terrified of them. The shock causes her to have a fatal heart attack. Holland runs away without telling anyone, but accidentally leaves his harmonica behind. The boys' mother becomes suspicious of Niles' secrecy and finds the tobacco tin containing the ring; it also contains a human finger. She demands Niles tell her how he got the ring and refuses to believe him when he says Holland gave it to him. Holland rushes at his mother and struggles to take the ring from her, knocking her downstairs. The fall leaves her catatonic and paralyzed. Several days later, Mrs. Rowe's body is discovered. Ada finds Holland's harmonica in Mrs. Rowe's house and asks Niles if he knows what happened. Niles admits that Holland has been doing "bad things" all summer. Ada tries to force Niles to admit that Holland has been dead since their birthday last March when he fell down a well, but Niles is unable to accept the truth. In a trance, he recalls using "the game" to communicate with his dead twin the night before Holland was buried. Holland instructed Niles to open his coffin, cut off his finger, and take the ring. Ada realizes that Niles has been using the game to keep his brother alive in his mind, and that it is in fact Niles who is responsible for all of the tragedies. Unwilling to surrender her beloved grandson, Ada warns him that he never must play the game again. Torrie gives birth to a baby girl, whom Niles adores, but Holland (Niles), who is fascinated with the recent kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, steals the infant. A posse is formed to find the child, while Ada, suspecting the worst, searches for Niles. The baby is discovered drowned in a wine cask, and an intellectually disabled farmhand is lynched for the murder. Ada finds Niles alone in the apple cellar, demanding that "Holland" tell him where the baby is. Realizing what has happened, Ada pours kerosene into the cellar and throws herself into it with a kerosene lamp, causing an inferno that burns the barn down. Months later, the remains of the burnt barn are cleared away. Niles escaped the fire due to "Holland" previously cutting the padlock from the cellar door. With Ada dead and his mother a catatonic and paralyzed invalid, no one suspects Niles' secret. 

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In the first novel, she is a University of Mississippi student who is kidnapped and raped by a criminal, Popeye. Corrupted by her experience in a house of prostitution, she lies in a court, resulting in an innocent man being lynched for a murder. In the second novel, she plans on leaving her family and going back to a criminal lifestyle until her maid kills her child to return her mind to clarity. In the first film, Temple instead tells the truth on the witness stand and reveals her sordid past. The second film uses elements of both novels, though she does not attend a court hearing in that one. 

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Lewis has been both criticized and congratulated for his unorthodox writing style in Babbitt. One reviewer said "There is no plot whatever... Babbitt simply grows two years older as the tale unfolds."Mencken, H. L., "Portrait of an American Citizen," The Smart Set 69 (October 1922) pp. 138–139 Lewis presents a chronological series of scenes in the life of his title character. After introducing George F. Babbitt as a middle-aged man, "nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay," Lewis presents a meticulously detailed description of Babbitt's morning routine.Babbitt, p.2 Each item Babbitt encounters is explained, from the high-tech alarm clock, which Babbitt sees as a marker of social status, to the rough camp blanket, a symbol of the freedom and heroism of the West. As he dresses for the day, Babbitt contemplates each article of his "Solid Citizen" uniform, the most important being his Booster's club button, which he wears with pride. The first seven chapters follow Babbitt's life over the course of a single day. Over breakfast Babbitt dotes on his ten- year-old daughter Tinka, tries to dissuade his 22-year-old daughter Verona from her newfound socialist leanings, and encourages his 17-year-old son Ted to try harder in school. At the office he dictates letters and discusses real estate advertising with his employees. Babbitt is professionally successful as a realtor. Much of his energy in early chapters is spent on climbing the social ladder through booster functions, real estate sales, and making good with various dignitaries. According to Babbitt, any "decent" man in Zenith belonged to at least two or three "lodges" or booster clubs. They were good for potential business partnerships, getting time away from home and family life, and quite simply because "it was the thing to do."Babbitt, p.203 Babbitt admits that these clubs "stimulated him like brandy" and that he often finds work dull and nerve-wracking in comparison. Lewis also paints vivid scenes of Babbitt bartering for liquor (despite being a supporter of Prohibition) and hosting dinner parties. At his college class reunion, Babbitt reconnects with a former classmate, Charles McKelvey, whose success in the construction business has made him a millionaire. Seizing the opportunity to hobnob with someone from a wealthier class, Babbitt invites the McKelveys to a dinner party. Although Babbitt hopes the party will help his family rise socially, the McKelveys leave early and do not extend a dinner invitation in return. Gradually, Babbitt realizes his dissatisfaction with "The American Dream," and attempts to quell these feelings by going camping in Maine with his close friend and old college roommate Paul Riesling. When Babbitt and Paul arrive at the camp they marvel at the beauty and simplicity of nature. Looking out over a lake Babbitt comments: "I'd just like to sit here – the rest of my life – and whittle – and sit. And never hear a typewriter."Babbitt, p. 149 Paul is similarly entranced, stating: "Oh it's darn good, Georgie. There's something eternal about it." Although the trip has its ups and downs, the two men consider it an overall success, and leave feeling optimistic about the year ahead. On the day that Babbitt gets elected vice-president of the Booster's club, he finds out that Paul shot his wife Zilla. Babbitt immediately drives to the jail where Paul is being held. Babbitt is very shaken up by the situation, trying to think of ways to help Paul out. When Paul is sentenced to a three-year jail term, "Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Paul, was meaningless."Babbitt, p. 269 Shortly after Paul's arrest, Myra (Babbitt's wife) and Tinka go to visit relatives, leaving Babbitt more or less on his own. Alone with his thoughts, Babbitt begins to ask himself what it was he really wanted in life. Eventually, "he stumbled upon the admission that he wanted the fairy girl – in the flesh."Babbitt, p. 273 Missing Paul, Babbitt decides to return to Maine. He imagines himself a rugged outdoorsman, and thinks about what it would be like to become a camp guide himself. Ultimately, however, he is disenchanted with the wilderness and leaves "lonelier than he had ever been in his life."Babbitt, p. 300 Eventually Babbitt finds the cure for his loneliness in an attractive new client, Tanis Judique. He opens up to her about everything that happened with Paul and Zilla, and Tanis proves to be a sympathetic listener. In time, Babbitt begins to rebel against all of the standards he formerly held: he jumps into liberal politics with famous socialist/'single tax' litigator Seneca Doane; conducts an extramarital affair with Tanis; goes on various vacations; and cavorts around Zenith with would-be Bohemians and flappers. But each effort ends up disillusioning him to the concept of rebellion. On his excursions with Tanis and her group of friends, "the Bunch," he learns that even the Bohemians have rigid standards for their subculture. When Virgil Gunch and others discover Babbitt's activities with Seneca Doane and Tanis Judique, Virgil tries to convince Babbitt to return to conformity and join their newly founded "Good Citizens' League." Babbitt refuses. His former friends then ostracize him, boycotting Babbitt's real estate ventures and shunning him publicly in clubs around town. Babbitt slowly becomes aware that his forays into nonconformity are not only futile but also destructive of the life and the friends he once loved. Yet he continues with them – even after Myra suspects Babbitt's affair, though she has no proof or specific knowledge. Unrelated to these events, Myra falls seriously ill with acute appendicitis. Babbitt, in a near-epiphany, rushes home and relinquishes all rebellion in order to care for his wife. During her long recovery, they spend a lot of time together, rekindling their intimacy. In short time, his old friends and colleagues welcome Babbitt back into the fold. The consequence of his disgruntled philosophical wanderings being met with practical events of life, he reverts into dispassionate conformity by the end; however, Babbitt never quite loses hold of the sentimentality, empathy, and hope for a meaningful life that he had developed. In the final scene, all has been righted in his life and he is back on a traditional track. He is awakened in the night to find that his son Ted and Eunice, the daughter of his neighbor, have not returned from a party. In the morning his wife informs him that the two have been discovered in the house, having been married that night. While an assemblage of friends and family gather to denounce this development, Babbitt excuses himself and Ted to be alone. He offers his approval of the marriage, stating that though he does not agree, he admires the fact that Ted has chosen to lead his life by his own terms and not that of conformity. 

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:The first chapter of this novel is a short story titled "The Stoker". The story describes the bizarre wanderings of sixteen-year-old European immigrant Karl Roßmann, who was forced to go to New York City to escape the scandal of his seduction by a housemaid. As the ship arrives in the United States, he becomes friends with a stoker who is about to be dismissed from his job. Karl identifies with the stoker and decides to help him; together they go to see the captain of the ship. In a surreal turn of events, Karl's uncle, Senator Jacob, is in a meeting with the captain. Karl does not know that Senator Jacob is his uncle, but Mr. Jacob recognizes him and takes him away from the stoker. Karl stays with his uncle for some time but is later abandoned by him after making a visit to his uncle's friend without his uncle's full approval. Wandering aimlessly, he becomes friends with two drifters named Robinson and Delamarche. They promise to find him a job, but they sell his suit without permission, eat his food in front of him without offering him any, and ransack his belongings. Finally, Karl departs from them on bad terms after he's offered a job by a manager at Hotel Occidental. He works there as a lift-boy. One day Robinson shows up drunk at his work asking him for money. Afraid of losing his job being seen talking with a friend, which is forbidden for lift-boys, Karl agrees to lend him money, then commits the far worse offence of bunking a drunk-sick Robinson in the lift-boy dorm. Being dismissed for leaving his post, Karl agrees not only to pay for Robinson's taxi, but also joins him. They travel to Delamarche's place. Delamarche is now staying with a wealthy and obese lady named Brunelda. She wants to take in Karl as her servant. Karl refuses, but Delamarche physically forces him to stay and he is imprisoned in her apartment. He tries to break out, but is beaten by Delamarche and Robinson. On the balcony, he chats with a student who tells him he should stay, because it is hard to find a job elsewhere. He decides to stay. One day he sees an advertisement for the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, which is looking for employees. The theatre promises to find employment for everyone. Karl applies for a job and gets engaged as a "technical worker." He is then sent to Oklahoma by train and is welcomed by the vastness of the valleys and adopts the name "Negro" as his own. 

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Three decades after the great war between the humans and the Zentradi, in January 2040, the U.N. government is developing new technologies to use in their transforming fighter aircraft by running tests on the colony planet Eden. Military test pilots and former childhood friends, loose cannon Isamu Alva Dyson and the Zentradi mixed race Guld Goa Bowman, are selected to each pilot a new aircraft (Shinsei Industries' YF-19 & General Galaxy's YF-21) for Project Super Nova, to choose the newest successor to the VF-11 Thunderbolt variable fighter which is currently still in use by the U.N. Spacy military forces. Their own personal grudges end up disrupting the tests, and begin to wreak havoc on the program. Their rivalry heats up when a mutual friend, Myung Fang Lone, shows up. Myung was a childhood friend of both pilots, but the three of them had a falling out, and quickly grew apart. This is alluded to throughout the story, and evidence of the strained relationship between Myung and either of the two men is apparent, while their distaste for one another is obvious. When they meet again, they discover that Myung is now the producer of Sharon Apple, the hottest entertainer in the galaxy, who just happens to be an AI hologram. Unbeknownst to the public, the Sharon AI is incomplete and requires Myung to provide emotions during concerts. During a testing session, Guld and Isamu finally face off against each other – and an all-out fight begins as each tries to best the other. Despite being in the middle of a testing area, they quickly proceed to tear the surrounding area to shreds in their fight to gain superiority over the other. Having turned off their communications equipment, both pilots fight using the test aircraft in a series of stunning dog-fight maneuvers before going into battroid form and finishing the fight on the ground. In the process, an "accidental" gun pod discharge injures Isamu and he is taken to the hospital, where he awakens to Myung standing watch over him. After returning to duty, a military tribunal questions Guld about their fight in the test area, but ultimately the decision is left up to the Admiral in charge of the project. Chief Millard, the station commander of New Edwards Test Flight Facility, reluctantly tells both pilots that their mission and the project has been scrubbed by the U.N. Spacy High Command – due to the completion of a newer, and previously unknown aircraft, the Ghost X-9 (ゴースト X-9), an advanced stealth UCAV prototype which was secretly being produced on Earth while two other prototypes (YF-19 and YF-21) were simultaneously being tested for Project Super Nova in planet Eden. With the Ghost X-9 completed, testing on the YF-19 and YF-21 was halted indefinitely, since the higher-ups believe that the new unmanned fighter is superior in every way. Meanwhile, the AI Sharon Apple has developed a malevolent consciousness, due to an illegal bio-chip having been installed by lead scientist on the project, Marge Gueldoa. During her concert in the Atlantis Dome inside Earth's Macross City, Sharon quickly takes over both the Ghost X-9 and the SDF-1 Macross Fortress and hypnotizes her audience and the Macross' staff, while trapping Myung in the Macross itself. Wanting to prove that man-made fighter units are a necessity and to prove his worth, Isamu and Yang (the YF-19's engineer) take the fighter jet and space-fold to Earth to beat the X-9 at its own game, while Guld gives chase in the YF-21. Sharon hacks into Earth's outer space defences, but both Isamu and Guld make it through. They then proceed to attack each other again, as they argue about childhood grudges. At the climax of the fight Guld, finally achieving a target lock, releases a large fury of missiles seemingly destroying the YF-19. As this happens, Guld is flooded by repressed memories. Now realizing it was truly his own jealous rage that had torn the friendship apart. Having saved himself and Yang by cutting engine throttle and gliding, the YF-19 then appears in the skies above Guld and the two old friends reconcile. When discovering that Myung's life is in danger, Isamu and Guld quickly go to her aid. While Isamu goes after Sharon, Guld fights the X-9 and ultimately destroys it by removing the gravitational safety limiters on his aircraft, and matching the X-9's velocity/maneuverability, which is much higher than normally possible due to it being computer-controlled and having no pilot, until he achieves a target lock and shoots the X-9 down. However, removing the limiters allows Guld to achieve accelerations exceeding human (even Zentradi-Human) limitations, which ultimately leads to his death, the g-forces generated by his piloting literally crushing him even as he crashes the YF-21 into the X-9, destroying it. While fighting the SDF-1 Macross, Sharon hypnotises Yang who shoots at Isamu but only hits his helmet. Isamu ejected Yang but then is hypnotized by Sharon's voice, and is left to crash to his death. At the last second, Myung's voice reaches him and brings him out back to consciousness. Dodging the Macross' fire, Isamu is able to destroy the central computer, effectively eliminating Sharon. The story ends as the sun rises over the Macross Fortress, with Myung waving to Isamu, who has survived the destruction of Sharon's computer. Eventually, the U.N. government banned all AI technology developments after the incident, and allowed the continuation of Project Super Nova. 

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Thomas Fowler is a British journalist in his fifties who has covered the French war in Vietnam for more than two years. He meets a young American idealist named Alden Pyle, a CIA agent working undercover. Pyle lives his life and forms his opinions based on foreign policy books written by York Harding with no real experience in Southeast Asia matters. Harding's theory is that neither communism nor colonialism are proper in foreign lands like Vietnam, but rather a "Third Force"—usually a combination of traditions—works best. When they first meet, the earnest Pyle asks Fowler to help him understand more about the country, but the older man's cynical realism does not sink in. Pyle is certain that American power can put the Third Force in charge, but he knows little about Indochina and is recasting it into theoretical categories. Fowler has a live- in lover, Phuong, who is only 20 years old and was previously a dancer at The Arc-en-Ciel (Rainbow) on Jaccareo Road, in Cholon. Her sister's intent is to arrange a marriage for Phuong that will benefit herself and her family. The sister disapproves of their relationship, as Fowler is already married and an atheist. So, at a dinner with Fowler and Phuong, Pyle meets her sister, who immediately starts questioning Pyle about his viability for marriage with Phuong. Towards the end of the dinner, Pyle dances with Phuong, and Fowler notes how poorly the upstart dances. Fowler goes to Phat Diem to witness a battle there. Pyle travels there to tell him that he has been in love with Phuong since the first night he saw her, and that he wants to marry her. They make a toast to nothing and Pyle leaves the next day. Fowler gets a letter from Pyle thanking him for being so nice. The letter annoys Fowler because of Pyle's arrogant confidence that Phuong will leave Fowler to marry him. Meanwhile, Fowler's editor wants him to transfer back to England. Pyle comes to Fowler's residence and they ask Phuong to choose between them. She chooses Fowler, unaware that he is pending a transfer. Fowler writes to his wife to ask for a divorce in front of Phuong. Fowler and Pyle meet again in a war zone. They end up in a guard tower where they discuss topics ranging from sexual experiences to religion. Their presence endangers the local guards by attracting an attack by the Viet Minh. These indigenous auxiliaries simply want to live their lives, but they are doomed by their contact with foreign intrigue. Pyle saves Fowler's life as they escape. Fowler goes back to Saigon, where he lies to Phuong that his wife will divorce him. Pyle exposes the lie and Phuong must choose between him and Fowler. Like a small country caught between imperial rivals, Phuong considers her own interests realistically and without sentiment. She moves in with Pyle. After receiving a letter from Fowler, his editor decides that he can stay in Indo-China for another year. Fowler goes into the midst of the battlefield to witness events. When Fowler returns to Saigon, he goes to Pyle's office to confront him, but Pyle is out. Pyle comes over later for drinks and they talk about his pending marriage to Phuong. Later that week, a car bomb is detonated and many innocent civilians are killed. Fowler realizes that Pyle was involved, having allied himself with General Thé, a renegade commander supposed to be the "Third Force" described in Harding's book. Pyle thus brings disaster upon innocents, all the while certain he is bringing a third way to Vietnam. Fowler is emotionally conflicted about this discovery, but ultimately decides to aid in the assassination of Pyle. Though the police suspect that Fowler is involved, they cannot prove anything. Phuong goes back to Fowler as if nothing had ever happened. In the last chapter, Fowler receives a telegram from his wife in which she states that she has changed her mind and will begin divorce proceedings. The novel ends with Fowler thinking about his first meeting with, and the death of, Pyle. 

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A shoemaker, Henry Hobson, has three daughters: Maggie, Alice and Vickey. The daughters work in the shop unpaid. Hobson spends his time drinking with the fellow members of the masons at the Moonrakers pub. One day, Mrs Hepworth, a rich customer of Hobson, demands to know who made her boots: it is Hobson's underpaid bootmaker, Will Mossop. She insists that all her and her daughters' boots must from now on be made by Will, and tells him to inform her if ever he should leave Hobson's. Maggie, who is a talented businesswoman and considered too old and plain to marry, proposes marriage to Will. Will reluctantly agrees. When Hobson comes back, she tells him that she intends to marry Will, but he laughs at her, and threatens to beat Will for courting her. At this, Will leaves the shop, and Maggie goes with him. They borrow £100 from Mrs Hepworth, set up a shop on their own, and marry as soon as the banns of marriage have been called. A month later, Hobson falls into the warehouse belonging to the father of Fred Beenstock, Vickey's love. Maggie comes back to tell her sisters that she is going to marry them off herself. Hobson has refused to settle any money on them, without which they are unlikely to find decent husbands. With the help of lawyer Albert Prosser, Alice's love, they issue a writ claiming damages from Hobson for trespass, damage to corn sacks and spying on trade secrets. Hobson eventually agrees to pay, the money is settled on the girls and they can now get married. Thanks to Will's skill as a bootmaker and Maggie's business acumen, their shop is very successful and, within a year, they have taken nearly all of Hobson's trade. Hobson is almost bankrupt and drinking himself to death. After an attack of delirium tremens, he asks each of his daughters to look after him. They all refuse, but eventually Maggie agrees to do so provided that Will takes over his business, with Hobson remaining as a sleeping partner only. 

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Crisóstomo Ibarra, the mestizo son of the recently deceased Don Rafael Ibarra, is returning to San Diego in Laguna after seven years of study in Europe. Kapitán Tiago, a family friend, bids him to spend his first night in Manila where Tiago hosts a reunion party at his riverside home on Anloague Street. Crisóstomo obliges. At dinner he encounters old friends, Manila high society, and Padre Dámaso, San Diego's old curate at the time Ibarra left for Europe. Dámaso treats Crisóstomo with hostility, surprising the young man who took the friar to be a friend of his father. Crisóstomo excuses himself early and is making his way back to his hotel when Lieutenant Guevarra, another friend of his father, catches up with him. As the two of them walk to Crisóstomo's stop, and away from the socialites at the party who may possibly compromise them if they heard, Guevarra reveals to the young man the events leading up to Rafael's death and Dámaso's role in it. Crisóstomo, who has been grieving from the time he learned of his father's death, decides to forgive and not seek revenge. Guevarra nevertheless warns the young man to be careful. The following day, Crisóstomo returns to Kapitán Tiago's home in order to meet with his childhood sweetheart, Tiago's daughter María Clara. The two flirt and reminisce in the azotea, a porch overlooking the river. María reads back to Crisóstomo his farewell letter wherein he explained to her Rafael's wish for Crisóstomo to set out, to study in order to become a more useful citizen of the country. Seeing Crisóstomo agitated at the mention of his father, however, María playfully excuses herself, promising to see him again at her family's San Diego home during the town fiesta. Crisóstomo goes to the town cemetery upon reaching San Diego to visit his father's grave. However, he learns from the gravedigger that the town curate had ordered that Rafael's remains be exhumed and transferred to a Chinese cemetery. Although Crisóstomo is angered at the revelation, the gravedigger adds that on the night he dug up the corpse, it rained hard and he feared for his own soul, causing him to defy the order of the priest by throwing the body into the lake. At that moment, Padre Bernardo Salví, the new curate of San Diego, walks into the cemetery. Crisóstomo's anger explodes as he shoves him into the ground and demands an accounting; Salví fearfully tells Crisóstomo that the transfer was ordered by the previous curate, Padre Dámaso, causing the latter to leave in consternation. Crisóstomo, committed to his patriotic endeavors, is determined not to seek revenge and to put the matter behind him. As the days progress he carries out his plan to serve his country as his father wanted. He intends to use his family wealth to build a school, believing that his paisanos would benefit from a more modern education than what is offered in the schools run by the government, whose curriculum was heavily tempered by the teachings of the friars. Enjoying massive support, even from the Spanish authorities, Crisóstomo's preparations for his school advance quickly in only a few days. He receives counsel from Don Anastacio, a revered local philosopher, who refers him to a progressive schoolmaster who lamented the friars' influence on public education and wished to introduce reforms. The building was planned to begin construction with the cornerstone to be laid in a ceremony during San Diego's town fiesta. One day, taking a break, Crisóstomo, María, and their friends get on a boat and go on a picnic along the shores of the Laguna de Baý, away from the town center. It is then discovered that a crocodile had been lurking on the fish pens owned by the Ibarras. Elías, the boat's pilot, jumps into the water with a bolo knife drawn. Sensing Elías is in danger, Crisóstomo jumps in as well, and they subdue the animal together. Crisóstomo mildly scolds the pilot for his rashness, while Elías proclaims himself in Crisóstomo's debt. On the day of the fiesta, Elías warns Crisóstomo of a plot to kill him at the cornerstone-laying. The ceremony involved the massive stone being lowered into a trench by a wooden derrick. Crisóstomo, being the principal sponsor of the project, is to lay the mortar using a trowel at the bottom of the trench. As he prepares to do so, however, the derrick fails and the stone falls into the trench, bringing the derrick down with it in a mighty crash. When the dust clears, a pale, dust-covered Crisóstomo stands stiffly by the trench, having narrowly missed the stone. In his place beneath the stone is the would-be assassin. Elías has disappeared. The festivities continue at Crisóstomo's insistence. Later that day, he hosts a luncheon to which Padre Dámaso gatecrashes. Over the meal, the old friar berates Crisóstomo, his learning, his journeys, and the school project. The other guests hiss for discretion, but Dámaso ignores them and continues in an even louder voice, insulting the memory of Rafael in front of Crisóstomo. At the mention of his father, Crisóstomo strikes the friar unconscious and holds a dinner knife to his neck. In an impassioned speech, Crisóstomo narrates to the astonished guests everything he heard from Lieutenant Guevarra, who was an officer of the local police, about Dámaso's schemes that resulted in the death of Rafael. As Crisóstomo is about to stab Dámaso, however, María Clara stays his arm and pleads for mercy. Crisóstomo is excommunicated from the church, but has it lifted through the intercession of the sympathetic governor general. However, upon his return to San Diego, María has turned sickly and refuses to see him. The new curate whom Crisóstomo roughly accosted at the cemetery, Padre Salví, is seen hovering around the house. Crisóstomo then meets the inoffensive Linares, a peninsular Spaniard who, unlike Crisóstomo, had been born in Spain. Tiago presents Linares as María's new suitor. Sensing Crisóstomo's influence with the government, Elías takes Crisóstomo into confidence and one moonlit night, they secretly sail out into the lake. Elías tells him about a revolutionary group poised for an open and violent clash with the government. This group has reached out to Elías in a bid for him to join them in their imminent uprising. Elías tells Crisóstomo that he managed to delay the group's plans by offering to speak to Crisóstomo first, that Crisóstomo may use his influence to effect the reforms Elías and his group wish to see. In their conversation, Elías narrates his family's history, how his grandfather in his youth worked as a bookkeeper in a Manila office but was accused of arson by the Spanish owner when the office burned down. He was prosecuted and upon release was shunned by the community as a dangerous lawbreaker. His wife turned to prostitution to support the family but were eventually driven into the hinterlands. Crisóstomo sympathizes with Elías, but insists that he could do nothing, and that the only change he was capable of was through his schoolbuilding project. Rebuffed, Elías advises Crisóstomo to avoid any association with him in the future for his own safety. Heartbroken and desperately needing to speak to María, Crisóstomo turns his focus more towards his school. One evening, though, Elías returns with more information – a rogue uprising was planned for that same night, and the instigators had used Crisóstomo's name in vain to recruit malcontents. The authorities know of the uprising and are prepared to spring a trap on the rebels. In panic and ready to abandon his project, Crisóstomo enlists Elías in sorting out and destroying documents in his study that may implicate him. Elías obliges, but comes across a name familiar to him: Don Pedro Eibarramendia. Crisóstomo tells him that Pedro was his great-grandfather, and that they had to shorten his long family name. Elías tells him Eibarramendia was the same Spaniard who accused his grandfather of arson and was thus the author of the misfortunes of Elías and his family. Frenzied, he raises his bolo to smite Crisóstomo, but regains his senses and leaves the house very upset. The uprising follows through, and many of the rebels are either captured or killed. They point to Crisóstomo as instructed and Crisóstomo is arrested. The following morning, the instigators are found dead. It is revealed that Padre Salví ordered the senior sexton to kill them in order to prevent the chance of them confessing that he actually took part in the plot to frame Crisóstomo. Elías, meanwhile, sneaks back into the Ibarra mansion during the night and sorts through documents and valuables, then burns down the house. Some time later, Kapitán Tiago hosts a dinner at his riverside house in Manila to celebrate María Clara's engagement with Linares. Present at the party were Padre Dámaso, Padre Salví, Lieutenant Guevarra, and other family friends. They were discussing the events that happened in San Diego and Crisóstomo's fate. Salví, who lusted after María Clara all along, says that he has requested to be transferred to the Convent of the Poor Clares in Manila under the pretense of recent events in San Diego being too great for him to bear. A despondent Guevarra outlines how the court came to condemn Crisóstomo. In a signed letter, he wrote to a certain woman before leaving for Europe, Crisóstomo spoke about his father, an alleged rebel who died in prison. Somehow this letter fell into the hands of an enemy, and Crisóstomo's handwriting was imitated to create the bogus orders used to recruit the malcontents to the San Diego uprising. Guevarra remarks that the penmanship on the orders was similar to Crisóstomo's penmanship seven years before, but not at the present day. And Crisóstomo had only to deny that the signature on the original letter was his, and the charge of sedition founded on those bogus letters would fail. But upon seeing the letter, which was the farewell letter he wrote to María Clara, Crisóstomo apparently lost the will to fight the charges and owned the letter as his. Guevarra then approaches María, who had been listening to his explanation. Privately but sorrowfully, he congratulates her for her common sense in yielding Crisóstomo's farewell letter. Now, the old officer tells her, she can live a life of peace. María is devastated. Later that evening Crisóstomo, having escaped from prison with the help of Elías, climbs up the azotea and confronts María in secret. María, distraught, does not deny giving up his farewell letter, but explains she did so only because Salví found Dámaso's old letters in the San Diego parsonage, letters from María's mother who was then pregnant with María. It turns out that Dámaso was María's father. Salví promised not to divulge Dámaso's letters to the public in exchange for Crisóstomo's farewell letter. Crisóstomo forgives her, María swears her undying love, and they part with a kiss. Crisóstomo and Elías escape on Elías's boat. They slip unnoticed through the Estero de Binondo and into the Pasig River. Elías tells Crisóstomo that his treasures and documents are buried in the middle of the forest owned by the Ibarras in San Diego. Wishing to make restitution, Crisóstomo offers Elías the chance to escape with him to a foreign country, where they will live as brothers. Elías declines, stating that his fate is with the country he wishes to see reformed and liberated. Crisóstomo then tells him of his own desire for revenge and revolution, to lengths that even Elías was unwilling to go. Elías tries to reason with him, but sentries catch up with them at the mouth of the Pasig River and pursue them across Laguna de Bay. Elías orders Crisóstomo to lie down and to meet with him in a few days at the mausoleum of Crisóstomo's grandfather in San Diego, as he jumps into the water in an effort to distract the pursuers. Elías is shot several times. The following day, news of the chase were in the newspapers. It is reported that Crisóstomo, the fugitive, had been killed by sentries in pursuit. At the news, María remorsefully demands of Dámaso that her wedding with Linares be called off and that she be entered into the cloister, or the grave. Seeing her resolution, Dámaso admits that the true reason that he ruined the Ibarra family and her relationship with Crisóstomo was because he was a mere mestizo and Dámaso wanted María to be as happy as she could be, and that was possible only if she were to marry a full-blooded peninsular Spaniard. María would not hear of it and repeated her ultimatum, the cloister or the grave. Knowing fully why Salví had earlier requested to be assigned as chaplain in the Convent of the Poor Clares, Dámaso pleads with María to reconsider, but to no avail. Weeping, Dámaso consents, knowing the horrible fate that awaits his daughter within the convent but finding it more tolerable than her suicide. A few nights later in the forest of the Ibarras, a boy pursues his mother through the darkness. The woman went insane with the constant beating of her husband and the loss of her other son, an altar boy, in the hands of Padre Salví. Basilio, the boy, catches up with Sisa, his mother, inside the Ibarra mausoleum in the middle of the forest, but the strain had already been too great for Sisa. She dies in Basilio's embrace. Basilio weeps for his mother, but then looks up to see Elías staring at them. Elías was dying himself, having lost a lot of blood and having had no food or nourishment for several days as he made his way to the mausoleum. He instructs Basilio to burn their bodies and if no one comes, to dig inside the mausoleum. He will find treasure, which he is to use for his own education. As Basilio leaves to fetch the wood, Elías sinks to the ground and says that he will die without seeing the dawn of freedom for his people and that those who see it must welcome it and not forget them that died in the darkness. In the epilogue, Padre Dámaso is transferred to occupy a curacy in a remote town. Distraught, he is found dead a day later. Kapitán Tiago fell into depression and became addicted to opium and is forgotten by the town. Padre Salví, meanwhile, awaits his consecration as a bishop. He is also the head priest of the convent where María Clara resides. Nothing is heard of María Clara; however, on a September night, during a typhoon, two patrolmen reported seeing a specter (implied to be María Clara) on the roof of the Convent of the Poor Clares moaning and weeping in despair. The next day, a representative of the authorities visited the convent to investigate previous night's events and asked to inspect all the nuns. One of the nuns had a wet and torn gown and with tears told the representative of "tales of horror" and begged for "protection against the outrages of hypocrisy" (which gives the implication that Padre Salví regularly rapes her when he is present). The abbess however, said that she was nothing more than a madwoman. A General J. also attempted to investigate the nun's case, but by then the abbess prohibited visits to the convent. Nothing more was said again about María Clara. 

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Beginning in Japan in 1999, Angel Sanctuary focuses on Setsuna Mudo, a 16-year-old troubled high-school student in love with his 15-year-old sister Sara. While struggling with his incestuous feelings, he learns that he is the reincarnation of Organic Angel Alexiel, who led a rebellion against her fellow angels after witnessing their slaughter of the Evils, a group of demons, after God's disappearance. At the conclusion of the revolt, she sealed away her younger twin brother, Inorganic Angel Rosiel, within the Earth, emotionally unable to fulfill his request to be killed before he became insane and destructive. Captured and branded a fallen angel, Alexiel was punished by having her body frozen and her soul endlessly reincarnated as a human whose life is full of misery. While Rosiel is freed by his subordinate Katan, Setsuna finds his life and Sara's endangered by various attempts to awaken Alexiel's dormant soul within him. Realizing they cannot bear to be separated, Setsuna and Sara run away together and consummate their love, hoping to start a new life together. Sara eventually dies protecting him from one of Rosiel's subordinates, and devastated, Setsuna awakens Alexiel's soul, causing widespread damage. Adam Kadamon, the angel closest to God, intervenes by turning back time to just after Alexiel's awakening and freezing time on Earth; she then tasks him with freeing her from her imprisonment. To search for Sara's soul, sent to Hell for incest, Setsuna's body enters a near-death state. While in Hell, his soul searches for hers, eventually learning that it has been taken to Heaven instead. Sara, meanwhile, awakens in the body of Jibriel, the archangel of water held prisoner by the angels; revealed to be Jibriel's reincarnation, Sara is eventually returned to her original body but finds herself impregnated by the malicious angel Sandolphon, who hopes that she will bear him a body. After Rosiel absorbs Sandolphon to gain his power, an act which speeds up Rosiel's physical and mental decay, Sandolphon's remnants possess her, causing her to see Setsuna as a monster. Assisted by Lucifer, the ruler of the demons who is in love with Alexiel, Rosiel unseals the Tower of Etenamenki, where God rests, with Alexiel's body. Intent on restoring the Earth, Setsuna follows him, with Kurai and the archangels of fire and earth; along the way, he aids an injured Katan, who hopes to save Rosiel before he loses his free will to do so. At the tower, Rosiel kills Katan, only to realize that he had killed the one he loved and tried to protect from himself; he then goes into a state of destructive despair. Awakening in her own body with Setsuna's help, Alexiel reveals to him that she had always loved him: because he had been born the opposite of his healthy sister, she bargained with God to save his life in exchange for her imprisonment, from which she later escaped with Lucifer, and an agreement to never show him any compassion. She then kills him and absorbs him into her womb so that they will never be apart again. Before dying, Rosiel passes along his power to Setsuna. Setsuna and his group find Adam Kadamon's head, used to nourish the unborn angels, and learn that she attempted to prevent God's plan of destroying humanity by hiding him and the tower from the angels and freezing time in hopes that Alexiel's reincarnation could save them. Because God draws power through Adam Kadamon, the archangels and Kurai seal her up, while Setsuna confronts God and encounters Sara and Lucifer there. Sara overcomes her possession to cast out Sandolphon, and Setsuna defeats God with Lucifer's help. Time returns to normal on Earth, where Setsuna and Sara joyfully reunite at last. 

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The Fourth Doctor and Leela arrive via TARDIS on "Storm Mine 4", a large sand-crawling miner vehicle used to gather valuable minerals from a desert planet brought to the surface by powerful sandstorms. They find the vehicle has a minimal human crew that oversee the menial work done by numerous robots, which are divided into three classes: black-coloured "Dum" robots that cannot speak, gold-green-coloured "Voc" robots that can interact with the human crew, and a silver-coloured "Super Voc" robot, SV7, who manages the other robots. The Doctor and Leela arrived shortly after the discovery of the corpse of one of the human crew, meteorologist Chub, recently murdered. The Doctor offers to help to find the murderer and prove their innocence. During the search, Leela comes across D84, a Dum who is secretly a Super Voc who is able to speak. The investigation is cut short when two more of the crew, Kerrill and Cass, are found killed, and the Doctor and Leela are secured in the robot repair section. However, crew member Poul is doubtful of the Doctor's or Leela's involvement, and when Poul finds Commander Uvanov standing over the corpse of yet another victim, he allows them to go free, convinced that Uvanov was guilty. The vehicle's engines go out of control, threatening the crew, and they find the ship's engineer Borg appears to be another murder victim. The Doctor helps to regulate the engines to get them out of danger, while an engineer called Dask stays behind to repair the damage to the controls. The Doctor and Leela continue to investigate the murders, with the Doctor convinced one of the robots is behind it. Leela takes him to meet D84, and D84 explains that he and Poul were planted on the vehicle as a precautionary measure against a robot revolution that may be initiated by Taren Capel, a scientist that had been raised by robots and with delusions of power. D84 joins them to search the vehicle, and they discover a secret laboratory where the other robots have been reprogrammed to kill humans. Suspecting that Taren is aboard, the Doctor requests all the humans to meet them on the bridge. However, Dask refuses, and reveals himself as Taren; he shuts down all of the robots except those he had reprogrammed (excluding D84), and orders SV7 to start hunting down the remaining humans. As Poul and D84 help to protect the others, the Doctor and Leela return to the robot repair section, and find a damaged robot with Borg's blood on it; the Doctor surmises that Borg had been strong enough to put up a struggle against his robot assassin. The Doctor uses the spare parts to construct a deactivator that will shut down all robots in close range, and then instructs Leela to hide with a canister of helium gas to use when Taren returns. Taren is lured to the laboratory by the Doctor and D84, and D84 sacrifices himself to use the deactivator to shut down the Voc guard in the laboratory and itself. When SV7 arrives to kill the remaining humans, Taren begins to give SV7 orders to kill the Doctor, but Leela opens the helium canister, causing Taren's voice to become high-pitched and unrecognisable by SV7. The Super Voc then kills him. The Doctor helps to shut down SV7 and revert Taren's programming. After assuring that Poul and the others are safe and help is on the way, the Doctor and Leela take their leave. 

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In Flanders, he met another Leveller and anti-Cromwell plotter, Edward Sexby, in 1656. Sindercombe joined his plot to assassinate Cromwell in hope of restoring the Puritan republic as they saw it. Sexby supplied Sindercombe with money and weapons. In 1656, Sindercombe returned to England and gathered a group of co-conspirators, including renegade soldier John Cecil, apparent conman William Boyes and John Toope, a member of Cromwell's Life-Guards. Toope gave the other plotters information about Cromwell's movements. 

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MI6 sends James Bond, agent 007, into the field to reconnoiter a terrorist arms bazaar on the Russian border. Despite M's insistence on letting 007 finish his reconnaissance, Royal Navy Admiral Roebuck orders the frigate HMS Chester to fire a missile at the bazaar. Bond then discovers two nuclear torpedoes mounted on an L-39 Albatros, and is forced to pilot the L-39 away seconds before the bazaar is destroyed by the missile because the missile is out of range to be aborted. Media baron Elliot Carver starts his plans to use an encoder obtained at the bazaar by his henchman, cyberterrorist Henry Gupta, to provoke war between China and the UK. Meaconing the GPS signal using the encoder, Gupta sends the frigate HMS Devonshire off-course into Chinese-occupied waters in the South China Sea, where Carver's stealth ship, commanded by Mr. Stamper, ambushes it – sinking it in the process – and steals one of its missiles, while shooting down a Chinese J-7 fighter jet investigating the scene and killing off the Devonshire's survivors with weaponry loaded with Chinese ammunition. The British Minister of Defence orders Roebuck to deploy the fleet to investigate the sinking of the frigate, and demanding retaliation, leaving M only 48 hours to investigate its sinking and avert a war. M sends Bond to investigate Carver because MI6 became suspicious of him after he releases news articles about the crisis hours before MI6 had learned of it. Bond travels to Hamburg to seduce Carver's wife, Paris, who is also an ex-girlfriend of Bond's from many years before, to get information that would help him enter Carver's newspaper headquarters. He defeats three of Stamper's men and cuts Carver off the air during the inaugural broadcast of his satellite network. Carver then discovers the truth between Paris and Bond and orders both of them killed. Meanwhile at Bond's hotel room, he and Paris reconcile. The next day, she provides him the information he needs to infiltrate Carver's newspaper factory to recover the GPS encoder. Bond goes to the newspaper factory and steals the encoder. While he is gone, Carver's assassin Dr. Kaufman kills Paris. After Bond returns to find Paris' body, Kaufman attempts to shoot him. Bond is able to kill Kaufman and escape, protecting the encoder. At a U.S. Air Force base in Okinawa, Bond learns that the encoder had been tampered with, and goes to the South China Sea to investigate the wreck (which was actually in Vietnamese waters). He and Wai Lin, a Chinese agent on the same case, explore the sunken ship and discover one of its cruise missiles missing, but after reaching the surface they are captured by Stamper and taken to the CMGN tower in Saigon. They soon escape and decide to collaborate on the investigation. The two contact the Royal Navy and the People's Liberation Army Air Force to explain Carver's scheme; Carver plans to destroy the Chinese government with the stolen missile, allowing a Chinese general to step in and stop war between Britain and China, both of which have waged a naval war. Once the conflict is over, Carver will be given exclusive broadcasting rights in China for the next century. Finding Carver's stealth ship, they board it to prevent him from firing the missile at Beijing. During the attempt, Wai Lin is captured, forcing Bond to devise a second plan. Bond captures Gupta to use as his own hostage, but Carver kills Gupta claiming he has "outlived his contract." Bond detonates an explosive which damages the ship, rendering it visible to the Chinese and British navies' radars, and vulnerable to a subsequent Royal Navy attack. While Wai Lin disables the engines, she is recaptured by Stamper. Bond kills Carver with his own sea drill and attempts to destroy the warhead with detonators, but Stamper attacks him, and sends a chained Wai Lin into the water. Bond traps Stamper in the missile firing mechanism and saves Wai Lin as the missile explodes, destroying the ship and killing Stamper. Bond and Wai Lin share a romantic moment amidst the wreckage as HMS Bedford searches for them. 

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Georgette Thomas (Lee Remick) and her six-year-old daughter Margaret Rose (Kimberly Block) travel from the East Texas town of Tyler to (unknown to him) meet her husband Henry Thomas (Steve McQueen) in his small coastal prairie southeastern Texas hometown of Columbus, Texas. Henry is a somewhat irresponsible rockabilly singer/guitarist, he has recently been released from prison after serving time for stabbing a man during a drunken brawl, and wasn't thinking of Georgette at all. Henry tries to make a home for his family (he seemed to be unaware of his daughter), but Kate Dawson (Georgia Simmons), the aging spinster who raised him after his parents died, remains a formidable presence in his life and tries to sabotage his efforts. She threatens repeatedly to have him returned to prison if he fails to acquiesce to her demands to give up singing, go to school, and get a real job. He resists this, and even convinces Georgette he will be a "star" someday, as he continues playing and working a part-time job with the Tillmans. When Kate Dawson finally dies, the evening after the funeral Henry drunkenly destroys her possessions (several shots show the belt she beat him with, untouched, hanging on a door near her bedroom), leaves with the silver willed to Catherine, then wrecks his car on the cemetery gate and desecrates her grave site. Henry is destined for prison again, and Georgette and Margaret Rose will leave Columbus with Henry's childhood friend, the local sheriff's deputy, Slim (Don Murray). Slim has tried to help straighten Henry out, since before the arrival of Georgette and Margaret Rose to Columbus at the beginning of the movie, and failed. Slim and Georgette have clearly fallen in love, even as Georgette does her best to love and gently comfort her self-tortured and cold husband Henry, unsuccessfully. In the final scene, after an indeterminate time has passed and they have loaded their vehicle and driven away from the rented house, Georgette sees Henry (as does Slim) in the barred back of a sheriff's vehicle at a road crossing stop and turns Margaret Rose away before she sees him, bound on his way back to "the pen". As they drive out of town and enter the open highway, Georgette answers Margaret Rose's question of where they're going; that they are driving away, to the warm Rio Grande Valley, to begin a new life together. Georgette tells Margaret Rose that they have traveled a long way, from Lovelady to Tyler, from Tyler to Columbus, and now to the distant Valley (Lovelady is Georgette's hometown, and where she and Henry met and married). 

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Twelve of the city golems, clay creatures forced to obey the written instructions placed inside their heads, decide to create a "king" golem. They fashion a golem from their own clay and place in his head instructions that would fulfill their hopes: "Bring peace to the world", "Treat everyone fairly" and so on. They enroll the help of a priest and dwarf bread baker to write the sacred instructions and bake the clay, respectively; Meshugah, the "king" golem, is initially sent to work in a candle factory. Around the same time, a cabal of Ankh-Morpork's guild leaders seeks to gradually depose the Patrician, replace him with Nobby Nobbs as the new king and rule the city through him. To implement this, the cabal orders the golems' newly made king, Meshugah, to make poisoned candles and have them delivered to the palace. Vetinari is successfully poisoned, making him severely ill. Meshugah, however, is "overloaded" by all the different instructions his creators gave him, and goes "mad": he starts overworking and, when he finishes raw materials, he rampages through the city, and goes on to murder the priest and baker who took part in his creation. At this point the City Watch steps in trying to solve the murders and the poisoning of Lord Vetinari. With the assistance of their new forensics expert dwarf Cheery Littlebottom, Commander Vimes and Captain Carrot slowly unravel the mystery. Carrot and Dorfl, one of the golems, fight and defeat the golem king at the candlestick factory. Afterwards, Vimes confronts the city's chief heraldry expert, a vampire, who instigated the whole affair. Dorfl arrests him despite tenuous evidence and Vimes burns down all the heraldic record as retribution against the "elite" and "noble" plotters, who had happily and self-righteously sacrificed the lives of several "commoners" in the pursuit of their scheme. In the end, Vetinari has recovered completely, Dorfl is sworn in as a Watchman, Vimes gets a pay raise, and the Watch House gets a new dartboard. Vetinari reveals to his assistant, Drumknott, that he had known of the plot for some time already. Vimes' rash actions in the pursuit of truth had considerably scared the city elite, which is precisely why Vetinari had let him continue: so that the plotters would know just how much worse off they'd be if Vetinari died. 

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The film opens with a short fragment outside the plot. Grainy, black- and-white, and silent, a title "Once Upon a Time" leads to Latino labourers picking coffee beans while armed foremen push rudely between them. One worker (McDowell with black hair and moustache) pockets a few beans ("Coffee for the Breakfast Table") but is seen by a foreman. He is next seen before a fat Caucasian magistrate who slobbers as he removes his cigar only to say "Guilty." The foreman draws his machete and lays it across the unfortunate labourer's wrists, bound to a wooden block, revealing that he is to lose his hands for the theft of a few beans. The machete rises, falls, and we see McDowell draw back in a silent scream. The scene blacks out, the word NOW appears onscreen and expands quickly to fill it. During his journey, Travis learns the lesson, reinforced by numerous songs in the soundtrack by Alan Price, that he must abandon his principles in order to succeed, but unlike the other characters he meets he must retain a detached idealism that will allow him to distance himself from the evils of the world. Travis progresses from coffee salesman (working for Imperial Coffee in the North East of England and Scotland) to a victim of torture in a government installation and a medical research subject, under the supervision of Dr Millar. In parallel with Travis's experiences, the film shows 1960s Britain retreating from its imperial past, but managing to retain some influence in the world by means of corrupt dealings with foreign dictators. After finding out his girlfriend is the daughter of Sir James Burgess, an evil industrialist, he is appointed Burgess' personal assistant. With Dr Munda, the dictator of Zingara, a brutal police state which nevertheless manages to be a playground for wealthy people from the developed world, Burgess sells the regime a chemical called PL45 'Honey' for spraying on rebel areas (the effects resemble those of napalm). Burgess connives at having Travis found guilty of fraud, and he is imprisoned for five years. The film then cuts to five years on, when Travis has finished his sentence, become a model prisoner, and converted to humanism. He is quickly faced with a bewildering series of assaults upon his new-found idealism, culminating in a scene in which he is attacked by down and outs whom he has been trying to help. The final scene of the film shows him becoming involved in a casting call for a film, with Lindsay Anderson himself playing the director of the film. He is given various props to handle, including a stack of schoolbooks and a machine gun. When asked to smile Mick continually asks why. The director slaps Travis with his script book after he fails to understand what is being asked of him. After a cut to black (a device used throughout the film) a slow look of understanding crosses Mick's face. The scene then cuts to a party with dancing which includes all of the cast celebrating. 

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Sonny Malone attempts to make a living as a freelance artist but fails, and he returns to his old job of painting album cover reproductions at AirFlo Records. He rips up one of his failed freelance drawings and throws it into the wind, and it hits a mural of the Nine Muses of Olympus and brings them to life. The sisters fly up into the sky, but one of them, Terpsichore, returns to Earth. Terpsichore proceeds to roller skate through town, and collides with Sonny, leading her to kiss him before skating away. Later, Sonny is tasked with painting the album cover for a group called The Nine Sisters, which shows Terpsichore standing in front of an abandoned art deco auditorium. The cameraman reveals that the woman was not supposed to be on the cover, but suddenly appeared in a few of the shots. Sonny goes to the auditorium and finds Terpsichore, who introduces herself as Kira. The two of them fall in love, though Kira refuses to tell Sonny anything about herself. Sonny meets and befriends Danny McGuire, a has-been big band orchestra leader turned construction mogul. Danny once had a muse in the 1940s who looked significantly like Kira. Kira encourages Sonny and Danny to open a nightclub at the auditorium, and the two begin working on this project as partners. However, Kira eventually confesses to Sonny that she is a Muse and cannot stay in love with him. Sonny gets upset, and Kira leaves Earth. Danny tells Sonny to keep pursuing Kira, encouraging Sonny not to give up on his ambitions like he did after his own muse left him. Sonny manages to enter Kira's home, a forbidden place called Xanadu, by roller skating into the Muses' mural. Inside the realm of the gods, Kira's father Zeus denies Sonny's plea to let Kira come back to Earth, and despite Kira's mother Mnemosyne interceding for Sonny and Kira, Zeus ultimately sends Sonny back to Earth. Kira then professes her feelings for Sonny, and her parents decide to let her go back to him for "a moment, or maybe forever." Kira and the Muses perform at the grand opening of Sonny and Danny's nightclub Xanadu before returning to their realm. Sonny is saddened by their departure, but upon seeing a waitress who looks exactly like Kira, he stops her and asks to talk. 

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Fortunato and Montresor drink in the catacombs. 1935 Illustration by Arthur Rackham The story's narrator, Montresor, tells an unspecified person, who knows him very well, of the day he took his revenge on Fortunato (Italian for "the fortunate one"), a fellow nobleman. Angry over numerous injuries and some unspecified insult, Montresor plots to murder his "friend" during Carnival, while the man is drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley. Montresor lures Fortunato into a private wine- tasting excursion by telling him he has obtained a pipe (about 130 gallons, 492 litres) of what he believes to be a rare vintage of Amontillado. He proposes obtaining confirmation of the pipe's contents by inviting a fellow wine aficionado, Luchesi, for a private tasting. Montresor knows Fortunato will not be able to resist demonstrating his discerning palate for wine and will insist that he taste the amontillado rather than Luchesi who, as he claims, "cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry". Fortunato goes with Montresor to the wine cellars of the latter's palazzo, where they wander in the catacombs. Montresor offers wine (first Médoc, then De Grave) to Fortunato in order to keep him inebriated. Montresor warns Fortunato, who has a bad cough, of the dampness, and suggests they go back, but Fortunato insists on continuing, claiming that he "shall not die of a cough". During their walk, Montresor mentions his family coat of arms: a golden foot in a blue background crushing a snake whose fangs are embedded in the foot's heel, with the motto Nemo me impune lacessit ("No one attacks me with impunity"). At one point, Fortunato makes an elaborate, grotesque gesture with an upraised wine bottle. When Montresor appears not to recognize the gesture, Fortunato asks, "You are not of the masons?" Montresor says he is, and when Fortunato, disbelieving, requests a sign, Montresor displays a trowel he had been hiding. When they come to a niche, Montresor tells his victim that the Amontillado is within. Fortunato enters drunk and unsuspecting and therefore, does not resist as Montresor quickly chains him to the wall. Montresor then declares that, since Fortunato won't go back, Montresor must "positively leave" him there. Montresor reveals brick and mortar, previously hidden among the bones nearby, and proceeds to wall up the niche using his trowel, entombing his friend alive. At first, Fortunato, who sobers up faster than Montresor anticipated, shakes the chains, trying to escape. Fortunato then screams for help, but Montresor mocks his cries, knowing nobody can hear them. Fortunato laughs weakly and tries to pretend that he is the subject of a joke and that people will be waiting for him (including the Lady Fortunato). As Montresor finishes the topmost row of stones, Fortunato wails, "For the love of God, Montresor!" to which Montresor replies, "Yes, for the love of God!" He listens for a reply but hears only the jester's bells ringing. Before placing the last stone, he drops a burning torch through the gap. He claims that he feels sick at heart, but dismisses this reaction as an effect of the dampness of the catacombs. In the last few sentences, Montresor reveals that 50 years later, Fortunato's body still hangs from its chains in the niche where he left it. The murderer concludes: In pace requiescat! ("May he rest in peace!"). 

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Set both in the 18th century and the present day, the novel centres on the mystery of an inscription on an extant engraved wayside stone tablet about a death from exposure. 

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In ancient China during the Warring States period, Nameless, a Qin prefect, arrives at the Qin capital city to meet the king of Qin, who has survived multiple attempts on his life by the assassins Long Sky, Flying Snow, and Broken Sword. As a result, the king has implemented extreme security measures: no visitors are allowed to approach the king within 100 paces. Nameless claims that he has slain the three assassins, and their weapons are displayed before the king, who allows the former to approach within ten paces and tell him his story. Nameless recounts first killing Long Sky at a gaming house, accompanied by warriors loyal to Qin, before traveling to meet Flying Snow and Broken Sword, who have taken refuge at a calligraphy school in the Zhao state. He tells Sword that he is there to commission a calligraphy scroll with the character for "Sword" (劍), secretly seeking to learn Sword's skill through his calligraphy. Nameless also learns that Snow and Sword, who are lovers, have gradually grown distant. Once the scroll is complete, Nameless reveals his identity and reveals that Snow and Sky had been together as lovers. He says that Sky was certain Snow would avenge him, challenges Snow to a duel the next day. A heartbroken and angry Sword makes love to his pupil Moon, and is seen by Snow. Snow kills Sword in revenge, and later Moon when she attempts to seek vengeance for her master. The next day, Nameless kills an emotionally unstable Snow before the Qin army, and claims her sword. As the tale concludes, the king expresses disbelief and accuses Nameless of staging the duels with the assassins; he had, in the previous assassination attempt, perceived Sword as an honourable man who would not betray Snow in that manner. The king then suggests that what really happened was that the assassins volunteered their lives so that Nameless could gain the king's trust, which would allow Nameless to get close enough to the king to kill him. He then narrates his guess at what really happened. In the king's hypothetical version of the story, Nameless seeks out Snow and Sword after staging the battle with Sky, telling them that he has perfected a special technique that allows him to kill any target that is within ten paces. Nameless explains that he can use this technique to kill the king, but to get close enough he must present one of their weapons to the king; he further explains that he only needs to kill one of them in public in order to accomplish his goal. Snow and Sword argue over who should be the one to die, resulting in a short fight, in which Snow manages to injure Sword. She then proceeds to meet Nameless before the Qin army, while the recovering Sword watches helplessly as Snow is defeated. Moon later gives Nameless her master's sword, telling him that the swords of Snow and Sword should remain together in death as they had in life. Nameless admits that he does indeed possess the special technique the king alluded to. However, he states that the King has underestimated Sword, and tells the true story. Nameless says that the special technique, while deadly, can also be used to deal a blow that misses all of the victim's vital organs while appearing fatal. He used this technique on Sky, and asks Snow and Sword to cooperate by faking a duel with him as well. He proves hinself by demonstrating that the technique is highly accurate as well as deadly. Snow agrees to the plan, but Sword refuses. Snow angrily accuses Sword of ruining the opportunity they had three years ago, revealing that Sword had overpowered the king of Qin during their assault on his palace three years prior, but had refused to kill him. She then attacks Sword, and manages to wound him with Nameless's help. The next day, Nameless "kills" Snow in front of the Qin army. Sword later explains to Nameless that he let the king live because he desired a unified, peaceful China, and that only the king of Qin could achieve that vision. He then sends Nameless off to the Qin capital, writing the words Tianxia in the sand before leaving in order to persuade Nameless to reconsider the assassination. The king, touched by the tale and Sword's understanding of his dream to unify China, ceases to fear Nameless. He tosses his own sword to Nameless and examines the scroll drawn by Sword. The king understands that it describes the ideal warrior, who, paradoxically, should have no desire to kill. Realizing the wisdom of these words, Nameless abandons his mission and spares the king. When Snow learns that Sword convinced Nameless to forgo the assassination, she furiously attacks Sword and unintentionally kills him when he chooses not to defend himself so that she would understand his feelings for her. Overwhelmed with sorrow, Snow commits suicide. At his court's urging, the king reluctantly orders Nameless to be executed at the Qin palace for his assassination attempt, understanding that in order to unify the nation, he must enforce the law and use Nameless as an example. Nameless receives a hero's funeral and a closing text identifies the king as Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. 

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Tom Ripley continues enjoying his wealthy lifestyle in Villeperce, France, with his wife, Heloise. He spends his days living comfortably in his house, Belle Ombre, until an associate, the American criminal Reeves Minot, asks him to commit murder for him. Ripley—who "detest[s] murder, unless absolutely necessary"—turns down the offer of $96,000 for two hits, and Minot goes back to Hamburg. The previous month, Ripley had gone to a party in Fontainebleau, where he was insulted by the host, Jonathan Trevanny, a poor British picture framer suffering from myeloid leukemia. As revenge, Ripley suggests to Minot that he might try to convince Trevanny to commit the murders. To ensure that the plan will work, Ripley starts a rumor that Trevanny has only months to live, and suggests that Minot fabricate evidence that Trevanny's leukemia has worsened, though Minot does not. Trevanny, who fears his death will leave his wife and son destitute, accepts Minot's offer of a visit to a medical specialist in Hamburg. There, he is persuaded to commit a murder in exchange for money. After carrying out the contract—a shooting in a crowded U-Bahn station—Trevanny insists that he is through as a hired gun. Minot invites him to Munich, where he visits another doctor. Minot persuades Trevanny to kill a Mafia boss, this time on a train using either a garrotte or a gun. Trevanny reluctantly gives in and gets on the train. He resolves to shoot the mafioso and commit suicide before he can be caught, asking Minot to ensure that his wife gets the money. But before Trevanny can go through with it, Ripley, feeling guilty about getting Trevanny into the situation, shows up and executes the mafioso himself. He asks Trevanny not to tell Minot that he has "assisted" with the assassination. Trevanny's wife Simone discovers a Swiss bank book with a large sum in his name and starts to suspect that he is hiding something from her. She links the rumor about her husband's condition to Ripley and asks Trevanny to tell her how he has been making so much money. Trevanny is unable to explain it to her and asks Ripley to help concoct a credible story. Ripley acknowledges his role in Trevanny's dilemma and promises to shepherd him through the ordeal. The Mafia become suspicious of Minot's involvement with the murders and bomb his house, prompting him to flee. Ripley begins to fear Mafia revenge when he receives a couple of suspicious phone calls. After sending Heloise and their housekeeper away, Ripley asks Trevanny to help him deal with any Mafia reprisals at Belle Ombre. When two Mafia hitmen turn up at Belle Ombre, Ripley kills one and forces the other to phone his boss in Milan and say that Ripley is not the man they are after before being executed. Simone then shows up at the house demanding answers, discovers the corpses, and is sent away in a taxi. Ripley and Trevanny drive to a remote village to burn the corpses in their own car. A few days later, Ripley visits Trevanny's house, where a quartet of Mafia gunmen appear. One of them opens fire on Ripley, but Trevanny steps in front of him and is mortally wounded; he dies in Ripley's car on the way to hospital. Ripley is unsure whether Trevanny's action was by accident or design. A few months later, Ripley encounters Simone in Fontainebleau, and she spits at him. He realizes that Simone has accepted her husband's blood money, and in doing so has remained silent about her suspicions of Ripley's instigation of the entire affair. 

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Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) is a wealthy American living in Hamburg, Germany. He is involved in an artwork forgery scheme, in which he appears at auctions to bid on forged paintings produced by an accomplice to drive up the price. At one of these auctions, he is introduced to Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz), a picture framer who is dying of leukemia. Zimmermann refuses to shake Ripley's hand when introduced, coldly saying "I've heard of you" before walking away. A French criminal, Raoul Minot (Gérard Blain), asks Ripley to murder a rival gangster. Ripley declines, but in order to get even for Zimmermann's slight, suggests Minot use Zimmermann for the job. Ripley spreads rumors that Zimmerman's illness has suddenly worsened. Minot offers Zimmerman a great deal of money to kill the gangster. Zimmermann initially turns Minot down, but becomes greatly distressed by the thought that he may not have long to live and wants to provide for his wife and son. He agrees to go to France with Minot for a second medical opinion. Minot arranges to have the results falsified to make Zimmermann expect the worst. Zimmermann agrees to shoot the gangster in a Paris Métro station. Ripley visits Zimmermann in his shop before and after the shooting to get a picture framed. Zimmermann is unaware of Ripley's involvement in the murder plot, and the two begin to form a bond. Minot visits Ripley again to report his satisfaction with Zimmermann's performance. Ripley, who has grown to like Zimmerman, is appalled when Minot says he plans to have him murder another rival gangster, this time on a speeding train using a garrote. Before Zimmermann can complete the murder, the target's bodyguard catches him. Ripley appears on the train and overpowers him. Zimmermann and Ripley execute the target and the bodyguard. They meet outside and Ripley confesses to suggesting him to Minot, and declines Zimmermann's suggestion to keep half the money for the second hit. Ripley asks Zimmermann to tell Minot that he did the job on the train alone. Back home, Zimmermann argues with his wife, Marianne, who does not believe his stories of being paid to undergo experimental treatments. Zimmermann has been receiving mysterious phone calls and suspects the Mafia is trying to find him. His fears grow worse when Minot tells him that his own flat was recently bombed. Ripley picks up Zimmermann and they drive to his mansion to wait for the assassins Ripley expects to appear. Ripley and Zimmermann ambush and kill the assassins. Ripley piles their bodies into the ambulance in which they arrived. Before he and Zimmermann can leave to dispose of the bodies, Marianne arrives and tells Zimmermann that the French medical reports are fake. Ripley explains that she and her husband can settle matters later, but now they need to dispose of the bodies. They drive to the sea, Ripley in the ambulance and Marianne driving her husband in their car. On an isolated beach, Ripley douses the ambulance with gasoline and sets fire to it. Zimmermann drives away with Marianne, abandoning Ripley. Moments later, he dies at the wheel; Marianne pulls the emergency brake and survives. At the beach, Ripley says to himself, "We made it anyway, Jonathan. Be careful." 

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Ambitious, handsome, but poorly educated, naïve, and immature, Clyde Griffiths is raised by poor and devoutly religious parents to help in their street missionary work. As a young adult, Clyde must, to help support his family, take menial jobs as a soda jerk, then a bellhop at a prestigious Kansas City hotel. There, his more sophisticated colleagues introduce him to bouts of social drinking and sex with prostitutes. Enjoying his new lifestyle, Clyde becomes infatuated with manipulative Hortense Briggs, who persuades him to buy her expensive gifts. When Clyde learns Hortense goes out with other men, he becomes jealous. Still Clyde would rather spend money on Hortense than to help his sister, who had eloped, only to end up pregnant and abandoned by her lover. Clyde's life changes dramatically when his friend Sparser, driving Clyde, Hortense, and other friends back from a secluded rendezvous in the country in his boss's car, used without permission, hits a little girl and kills her. Fleeing from the police at high speed, Sparser crashes the car. Everyone but Sparser and his partner flee the scene of the crime. Clyde leaves Kansas City, fearing prosecution as an accessory to Sparser's crimes. This pattern of personal irresponsibility and panicked decision-making in Clyde's life recurs in the story, culminating in the central tragedy of the novel. While working as a bellboy at an exclusive club in Chicago, he meets his wealthy uncle Samuel Griffiths, the owner of a shirt-collar factory in the fictional city of Lycurgus, New York. Samuel, feeling guilt for neglecting his poor relations, offers Clyde a menial job at the factory. After that, he promotes Clyde to a minor supervisory role. Samuel Griffiths's son Gilbert, Clyde's immediate supervisor, warns Clyde that as a manager, he should not consort with women working under his supervision. At the same time the Griffiths pay Clyde little attention socially. As Clyde has no close friends in Lycurgus, he becomes lonely. Emotionally vulnerable, Clyde is drawn to Roberta Alden, a poor and innocent farm girl working in his shop, who falls in love with him. Clyde secretly courts Roberta, ultimately persuading her to have sex with him rather than lose him, and she becomes pregnant. At the same time, elegant young socialite Sondra Finchley, daughter of another Lycurgus factory owner, takes an interest in Clyde despite his cousin Gilbert's efforts to keep them apart. Clyde's engaging manner makes him popular among the young smart set of Lycurgus; he and Sondra become close, and he courts her while neglecting Roberta. Roberta expects Clyde to marry her to avert the shame of an unwed pregnancy, but Clyde now dreams instead of marrying Sondra. Having failed to procure an abortion for Roberta, Clyde gives her no more than desultory help with living expenses while his relationship with Sondra matures. When Roberta threatens to reveal her relationship with Clyde unless he marries her, he plans to murder her by drowning while they go boating. He had read a local newspaper report of a boating accident. Clyde takes Roberta out in a canoe on the fictional Big Bittern Lake (modeled on Big Moose Lake, New York) in the Adirondacks, and rows to a secluded bay. He freezes. Sensing something wrong, Roberta moves toward him, and he unintentionally strikes her in the face with a camera, stunning her and accidentally capsizing the boat. Roberta, unable to swim, drowns, while Clyde, unwilling to save her, swims to shore. The narrative implies that the blow was accidental, but the trail of circumstantial evidence left by the panicky and guilt-ridden Clyde points to murder. The local authorities are eager to convict Clyde, to the point of manufacturing additional evidence against him, but he repeatedly incriminates himself with his confused and contradictory testimony. Clyde has a sensational trial before an unsympathetic and prejudiced jury of mostly religiously conservative farmers. Despite a vigorous (and untruthful) defense by two lawyers hired by his uncle, Clyde is convicted, sentenced to death, and after an appeal, is denied, He is executed by electric chair. The jailhouse scenes and correspondence between Clyde and his mother are exemplars of pathos in modern literature. 

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While there is an ongoing plot about Slocum preparing for a promotion at work, most of the book focuses on detailing various events from his life, ranging from early childhood to his predictions for the future, often in non- chronological order and with little if anything to connect one anecdote to the next. Near the end of the book, Slocum starts worrying about the state of his own sanity as he finds himself hallucinating or remembering events incorrectly, suggesting that some or all of the novel might be the product of his imagination, making him an unreliable narrator. Something Happened has failed to achieve the renown of Catch-22 but has a cult following, with some considering it one of Heller's finest works. 

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Two pairs of lovers play out a comedy of errors, in which Maggie (Meg Ryan) and Sam (Matthew Broderick), try several unethical and nasty tricks to break apart the envied union of their respective former partners, Anton (Tchéky Karyo) and Linda (Kelly Preston) including identity theft, assault, and destroying Anton's restaurant. Obsessive astronomer Sam is devastated when the love of his life, Linda, cheats on him and leaves him for a suave Frenchman named Anton. He therefore goes to New York to stalk her and sets up house (and a camera obscura) in the abandoned building opposite Linda's, intent on winning her back and waiting until she decides to leave her current lover. What Sam does not count on is being joined several weeks later by Maggie, a photographer and motorcyclist, who is determined to get revenge on Anton, her ex-fiance. Mutually hostile at first, the two of them eventually join forces in an attempt to separate the couple and ruin Anton's life. However, complications ensue when Sam and Maggie start falling for each other. 

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Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) returns to his native Mayberry to see his son Opie (Ron Howard) become a first-time father. He also intends to run in the soon-to-be held sheriff's election. When Andy learns that his old deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts), now back in Mayberry himself serving as acting sheriff, announced his own candidacy, Andy tells Opie that he won't run against Barney. Barney tells Andy that he decided to run for sheriff because nobody else would. Andy mentions that Barney's old girlfriend Thelma Lou, now divorced, is back in Mayberry. As Barney leaves to teach a safety class at school, they encounter Ernest T. Bass who gives them a cryptic rhyme: "Your hair was brown but now it's gray; make that monster go away." The "monster" is an elaborate publicity stunt orchestrated by businessman Wally Butler (Richard Lineback), who bought a restaurant outside of town and added a hotel. Andy goes to the cemetery to visit Aunt Bee's grave, and finds Thelma Lou there visiting her uncle's gravesite. They go to the school where Barney is teaching. While Barney and Thelma Lou get reacquainted, Andy drives over to Opie and his wife Eunice's house just as she is about to go into labor. They are unable to get to the hospital in time, and Andy delivers his grandson in the back of the car. The next day, Gomer and Goober are out fishing at Myers Lake when Gomer sees a monster stick its head up out of the water. Andy and Barney arrive shortly afterward, but Barney doesn't believe Gomer's story until he sees what looks like monster tracks in the mud. When Gomer later shows Barney a picture he took of Goober with something unidentifiable in the background, Barney becomes convinced there is a monster in the lake. With Barney's opponent Woods now running an aggressive campaign to discredit Barney, Howard and Opie try to convince Andy to re-enter the race. Meanwhile, former town drunk Otis Campbell (Hal Smith), now long sober and driving an ice cream truck, is serving customers near Myers Lake when he sees the "monster" pop out of the lake. Otis races to the courthouse to tell Barney. Despite Andy's pleading with Barney to end his quest because people were laughing at him, Otis' report convinces Barney to resume the hunt for the monster. At Butler's Inn, Andy notices a picture with a dragon's head in it and remembering Ernest T.'s rhyme, Andy drives up to the Darlings' homestead, where Ernest T. now hangs out. Briscoe Darling (Denver Pyle) and his daughter Charlene (Maggie Peterson) are delighted to see Andy. Andy manipulates Ernest T. into telling him when the monster will show up in Myers Lake again. At the lake, while Barney baits a trap, Andy spots Ernest T. going into a nearby stone quarry shed. Butler arrives at the shed to futilely get Ernest T. to reel the monster back in, but Andy catches both of them in the act. Barney and Howard follow Andy to the shed, and Andy makes it look like Barney plotted to make Butler overconfident and force his hand. Butler had found some old dragon artifacts, presumably left by the restaurant's former owners, and hired Ernest T. to instigate a hoax at Myers Lake to attract customers. Howard takes pictures of Barney with the dragon's head for the newspaper, and Andy tells Butler about the legal consequences of his actions. Later, at a victory rally for Sheriff Fife, when Barney learns that Andy opted out of the sheriff's race to give Barney a better chance to win, he humbly asks the crowd to vote for Andy as a write-in candidate because "That's exactly what I'm gonna do." Andy is eventually elected sheriff, Opie accepts a newspaper job in Binghamton, and Barney and Thelma Lou finally get married, with Ernest T. and the Darlings joining in the celebration. The final shot (seen behind the end credits) is of Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife folding up an American flag at the end of the day on Mayberry's Main Street. 

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The boys are playing football at recess when Bebe tells Stan that his girlfriend Wendy has decided to break up with him. Stan asks Bebe that he hasn't spoken to Wendy for weeks and also asks if he has done something wrong and Bebe replies that Wendy doesn't want to be with Stan anymore, much to Stan's shock. Stan's friends are careless and make fun of Bebe, but Stan falls into a deep depression and decides not to play football with them. His friends take him to the restaurant Raisins—where all of the employees are young preteen girls wearing heavy make-up—hoping to cheer him up. Later, Stan asks Bebe for help to get Wendy back. Bebe tells Stan to blast a Peter Gabriel song at her house. However, when doing this, he discovers Wendy has already began a relationship with Token. Nothing will change Stan's fortunes, and at Kyle's suggestion, when Stan refuses to go to P.E., he decides to socialize with the South Park Elementary's group of Goth kids. He begins wearing dark clothes, consuming large amounts of coffee, and delving deeper into his sadness. Meanwhile, Butters falls in love with a waitress at Raisins named Lexus, failing to see the insincerity of her interest in him. He obsesses over her and begins to spend all of his parents' money at the restaurant. Butters' parents, delighted that their son did not turn out gay, decide to come with Butters to meet his "girlfriend", but discover she was using him for money. Though they explain this to him, Butters tells his parents off. He reveals he has plans to move in with Lexus, who bluntly tells him that she was never his girlfriend. Butters becomes depressed, and the Goth kids invite him to join their clique. He refuses, noting that though he is upset, he is happy he can feel sadness, as it makes him feel more alive. Stan realizes Butters' point of view and emerges from his own depression. The next day, he rejoins his friends for football and tells Kyle he will handle his future problems in "the right way": by insulting his ex and her boyfriend. 

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The original comic's story begins as a mysterious deadly snowfall suddenly covers Buenos Aires and the surrounding metropolitan area, wiping out most life in a few hours. Juan Salvo, along with a couple of friends (Favalli, Lucas and Polski who were playing truco at his house), his wife and daughter remain safe from the lethal snowflakes thanks to the protection of Juan Salvo's home and the cleverness of Favalli. They organize to survive the ordeal, making special suits to be able to leave the house to gather supplies. During these trips they find Pablo, a twelve-year-old boy, and realize that crazed or needy survivors may be as much of a threat as the deadly snow. A few days into the snowfall, they learn that the phenomenon was caused by an extraterrestrial invasion to Earth. They are recruited by the army to fight the invaders. During this time, Salvo meets and befriends a few of his fellow soldiers, namely Franco, a lathe operator, and Mosca, a journalist. As the insurgents march towards the country's capital city, they fight on different occasions against giant insects (cascarudos, "beetles"); a humanoid species with many more fingers than humans, especially on their right hands (Manos, "Hands"); giant armored elephantine beasts capable of knocking buildings down ("Gurbos"); and fellow men who were captured and altered (hombres-robot, "robot-men"). All of these beings are pawns, remotely controlled through implants or fear devices by the real invaders, los Ellos ("Them"), unseen creatures who remain hidden, controlling everything from the distance. After managing a few victories, their forces suffer defeats and get reduced to a few men. Juan Salvo decides to return to his wife and daughter to go into hiding with them. A passing nuclear missile convinces Favalli and Franco that a larger global war has begun and that they cannot return empty- handed. Salvo reluctantly agrees to join them. After the trio attacks the aliens' HQ in Buenos Aires, they flee just before the city is destroyed by a nuclear attack. Gradually, the aliens lure the pockets of survivors throughout the country to "snow-free zones" as part of an elaborate ruse. Salvo's group splits, and he tries to escape with his wife and daughter using one of the alien spaceships. He accidentally triggers a time travel apparatus in the craft. As a result, the three are lost in separate time dimensions known as "continuums". Juan Salvo begins to travel through time seeking them, eventually being named Eternauta, a voyager of eternity. 

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In 1941, up- and-coming Broadway playwright Barton Fink (Turturro) accepts a contract from Capitol Pictures in Hollywood to write film scripts for a thousand dollars per week. Upon moving to Los Angeles, Fink settles into the cheap Hotel Earle. His room's only decoration is a small painting of a woman on the beach, arm raised to block the sun. Fink is assigned to a wrestling film by his new boss Jack Lipnick (Lerner), but he finds difficulty in writing for the unfamiliar subject. He is distracted by sounds coming from the room next door, and he phones the front desk to complain. His neighbor, Charlie Meadows (Goodman), is the source of the noise and visits Fink to apologize. As they talk, Fink proclaims his affection for "the common man", and Meadows describes his life as an insurance salesman. The Coen brothers wrote the role of Charlie Meadows for actor John Goodman, in part because of the "warm and friendly image that he projects for the viewer". Still unable to proceed beyond the first lines of his script, Fink consults producer Ben Geisler (Shalhoub) for advice. Irritated, the frenetic Geisler takes him to lunch and orders him to consult another writer for assistance. Fink accidentally meets the novelist W.P. Mayhew (Mahoney) in the bathroom. They briefly discuss movie-writing and arrange a second meeting later in the day. Fink later learns from Mayhew's secretary, Audrey Taylor (Davis), that Mayhew suffers from alcoholism and that Taylor ghostwrote most of his scripts. With one day left before his meeting with Lipnick to discuss the movie, Fink phones Taylor and begs her for assistance. Taylor visits him at the Earle and they have sex. Fink awakens the next morning to find that Taylor had been violently murdered. Horrified, he summons Meadows and asks for help. Meadows is repulsed but disposes of the body and orders Fink to avoid contacting the police. After Fink has a meeting with an unusually supportive Lipnick, Meadows announces to Fink that he is going to New York for several days, and asks him to watch over a package he is leaving behind. Soon afterwards, Fink is visited by two police detectives, who inform him that Meadows's real name is Karl "Madman" Mundt. Mundt is a serial killer whose modus operandi is beheading his victims. Stunned, Fink places the box on his desk without opening it and he begins writing feverishly. Fink produces the entire script in one sitting and he goes out for a night of celebratory dancing. Fink returns to find the detectives in his room, who inform him of Mayhew's murder and accuse Fink of complicity with Mundt. As the hotel is suddenly engulfed in flames, Mundt appears and kills the detectives with a shotgun, after which he mentions that he had paid a visit to Fink's parents and uncle in New York. Fink leaves the still-burning hotel, carrying the box and his script. Shortly thereafter he attempts to telephone his family, but there is no answer. In a final meeting with Lipnick, Fink's script is lambasted as "a fruity movie about suffering", and he is informed that he is to remain in Los Angeles; although Fink will remain under contract, Capitol Pictures will not produce anything he writes until he "grows up a little". Dazed, Fink wanders onto a beach, still carrying the package. He meets a woman who looks just like the one in the picture on his wall at the Earle, and she asks about the box. He tells her he does not know what it contains nor who owns it. She then assumes the pose from the picture. 

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Willie T. Soke (Billy Bob Thornton) and his dwarf assistant Marcus Skidmore (Tony Cox) are professional thieves. Every year, Willie gets a job as a department store Santa Claus and Marcus as an elf to rob shopping malls at night, with Marcus' wife Lois (Lauren Tom) as their getaway driver. Marcus takes his elf duties seriously, but Willie, a sex- addicted alcoholic, is gradually unable to perform with children, also affecting his safe-cracking abilities, much to Marcus's displeasure. When they are hired at the Saguaro Square Mall in Phoenix, Willie's vulgarity shocks the prudish mall manager Bob Chipeska (John Ritter), who brings them to the attention of security chief Gin Slagel (Bernie Mac). At the mall, Willie is visited by Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly), a friendly but exceedingly gullible, dimwitted overweight young boy who assumes Willie is really Santa, and is constantly bullied by a teenage gang of skateboarders. At a bar, Willie meets Sue (Lauren Graham), a woman with a Santa Claus fetish, and they begin a sexual relationship. After some casual sex with Sue in Willie's beaten-up Impala SS, Willie is harassed and attacked by a Hindustani hoodlum, but Thurman intervenes. Willie gives Thurman a ride home, where he lives with his senile grandmother (Cloris Leachman). Thurman reveals that his mother died and his father, Roger, is "exploring mountains"—actually in jail for embezzlement. Willie tricks Thurman into letting him rob the house safe and steal Roger's BMW 740iL (E38). Bob informs Gin that he overheard Willie having sex in a dressing room and Gin starts to investigate. Willie sees his motel room being raided, and moves in to Thurman's house, much to Thurman's delight. Marcus is angry at Willie for taking advantage of Thurman, and states his disapproval of Willie's sex addiction when Willie makes a rude remark about Thurman's grandmother. Gin visits Roger, who indirectly reveals that Willie is staying with Thurman illegally. Gin confronts Willie and Marcus at the mall, and takes them to a bar. There, he reveals that he has figured out their plan, and blackmails them for half the score to keep silent. Willie and Marcus’ partnership begins to falter, further exacerbated when Willie shows up to work drunk and destroys the Santa attraction, to Marcus' and Gin's shock. Willie attempts suicide by inhaling vehicle exhaust fumes. He gives Thurman a letter to give to the police, confessing his misdeeds and the heist planned for Christmas Eve. Willie notices Thurman's black eye, and abandons the suicide attempt to confront the skateboarders; he assaults their leader, intimidating them into leaving Thurman alone. Furious at Gin's blackmail, Marcus and Lois set a trap for him. Feigning the need to jump start their vehicle, Lois hits Gin with the car, and Marcus kills him via electrocution. Willie and Thurman prepare for the approaching holiday with help from Sue. On Christmas Eve, Willie, Marcus, and Lois burglarize the mall. Although some technical difficulties arise, Willie is successfully able to crack the safe. Meanwhile, he also gets a pink stuffed elephant that Thurman had wanted for Christmas. However, Marcus reveals to Willie that he intends to kill him, fed up with his increasing carelessness. As Marcus is about to execute Willie, the police unexpectedly swarm in, tipped off by the letter Willie gave Thurman. A fire fight ensues between Marcus and the cops while Willie flees. Determined to give Thurman his present, he leads the police on a chase to Thurman's house, ignoring their orders to freeze. He is shot repeatedly on Thurman's porch, but survives. The epilogue is told through a letter from Willie, recovering in the hospital. He expresses his gratitude to Thurman, and reveals that he was cleared of the robbery—the shooting of an unarmed Santa embarrassed the police—and will be working for the police as a sensitivity counselor. Sue is granted guardianship over Thurman and his house until his father's release. Marcus and Lois are in prison; Willie ends the letter by hoping that Roger will avoid them and telling Thurman that he should be out of the hospital soon and to be ready for his return. When the lead skateboard bully harasses Thurman again, Thurman finally stands up to him by kicking him hard in the crotch and riding away on his bike giving the finger to the downed bully. 

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Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) is a 15-year-old boy, portrayed as mature beyond his years, traveling home from school for Thanksgiving. He speaks fluent French, quotes Voltaire and finds girls of his own age to be too shallow and superficial, as well as too inexperienced in life. When an attractive girl from his school, Miranda Spear (Kate Mara), who is obviously interested in him, approaches Oscar, he politely brushes her off. Oscar confides in his friend Charlie (Robert Iler) that he is in love with a mature woman and plans to win her heart during Thanksgiving break. Oscar arrives at the apartment of his father, Columbia University history professor and author, Stanley Grubman (John Ritter), and stepmother, the passionate cardiologist, Eve (Sigourney Weaver). That evening, the Grubmans hold a party where Stanley introduces him to a girl of his age, but Oscar rebuffs her as well while staring at the object of his affection: his stepmother. Oscar tries to open up to her, but the unsuspecting Eve doesn't pick up on any of his advances. Stanley tells him to walk the girl home, but he hails her a cab. Depressed from his failure with the older woman, Oscar goes to a bar with a fake id and gets drunk. He bumps into Eve's best friend, chiropractor Diane Lodder (Bebe Neuwirth), who offers to take him to her own apartment seeing his current condition. Once there, Diane begins to massage him and they end up having sex. Oscar wakes the next morning and has an awkward encounter with Diane's boyfriend, Phil (Adam LeFevre). Back at home, Oscar plans a surprise lunch for Eve but first Stanley inquires about where Oscar spent the night. Oscar makes up a story about meeting Miranda Spear from school. He brings lunch to Eve at her lab, where he opens up to her once more, pondering the use of the heart as a symbol for affection. Together they decide that the liver should be the new symbol for love. Their conversation is interrupted by a phone call from Stanley, who mentions that Diane will be joining them for dinner. Worried that Diane will tell Eve about their tryst, Oscar finds Diane at a tea room with several of her friends. All act as though they know about the previous evening, and most of the women twice his age flirt with him. Oscar makes Diane promise to keep last night a secret from Stanley and especially Eve. At dinner, Diane drinks and behaves coyly. She plays footsie with Oscar and flirts with him in French. After she excuses herself from the table, Oscar follows to confront her. She kisses him while not being totally out of Stanley's view, after which Diane admits to Stanley and Eve that she and Oscar are lovers. The next day, Diane explains to Eve that she found Oscar a charming young man. Eve condemns her for seducing a mere 15-year-old, but Diane says many women would have done the same, including perhaps Eve. Later that day, Eve and Oscar play a tense round of tennis, lobbing insults at each other, ending up with Oscar getting hit in the head with a ball. Oscar explains to Eve that he only did what he did with Diane because he was drunk and she was wearing Eve's scarf. Eve immediately understands that he is in love with her. They share a passionate kiss but Eve eventually breaks away. At the end of Thanksgiving break, Eve and Stanley take Oscar to the train. Eve asks Oscar how his liver feels and he replies that it hurts, but is not broken. She also tells him how much she loves his father. On the train, Oscar meets up with Charlie, and runs into Miranda. Miranda quotes Voltaire, "If we do not find something pleasant at least we will find something new," and looks longingly at Oscar. Charlie notices this and Oscar tells Charlie that Miranda smells nice. Charlie asks about Eve and Oscar states that his obsession with Eve was not as important as it seemed. Charlie doesn't understand his friend, but Oscar smiles as the train rolls on. 

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Alex (Macy), a sad-eyed mournful man, lives a double life: he is married with a day job, and is a professional hitman. Trained by his father Michael (Sutherland) from youth, Alex is dissatisfied with his work and wishes to leave the business behind. He goes into psychotherapy disclosing that he is a hit man and also tells Dr. Josh Parks (Ritter), his psychologist, after a few sessions that he is attracted to a young woman he has met in the waiting room. She is Sarah (Campbell), 23, quick, edgy, and perhaps attracted to him as well, but he is married, so Sarah brushes him off. In flashbacks we see him get his start as a killer in the family business, at his father's prompting, from his killing of a squirrel as a young boy, to his first kill as a teenager. Worried that Alex is ratting him out, Michael gives Alex his next assignment: to kill Dr. Parks. Alex delays, while Dr. Parks, fearing for his own safety, contacts a police detective, Larson (Sandoval). Alex keeps returning to Sarah, calling her, stopping by her apartment, as he decides what to do about the hit, his father, his marriage and his malaise; eventually entering an affair with Sarah. His wife soon discovers the affair and abandons him, not before he discovers that his father had been grooming his son as a future assassin. Furious, he drives up to Michael's home and shoots him dead, only to be killed himself by Larson, who had been secretly following him. 

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The notorious criminal Divine lives under the pseudonym "Babs Johnson" with her mentally ill mother Edie, delinquent son Crackers, and traveling companion Cotton. They share a trailer on the outskirts of Phoenix, Maryland, next to a gazing ball and a pair of plastic pink flamingos. After learning that Divine has been named "the filthiest person alive" by a tabloid paper, jealous rivals Connie and Raymond Marble attempt to usurp her title. The Marbles run a black market baby ring: they kidnap young women, have them impregnated by their manservant, Channing, and sell the babies to lesbian couples. The proceeds are used to finance pornography shops and a network of dealers selling heroin in inner-city elementary schools. Raymond also earns money by exposing himself -- with a large kielbasa sausage or turkey neck tied to his penis -- to women and stealing their purses when they flee. One of Raymond's would-be targets, a transgender woman who has not completed gender reassignment surgery, thwarts his scheme by exposing her breast, penis and scrotum, causing Raymond to flee in shock. The Marbles enlist a spy, Cookie, to gather information about Divine by dating Crackers. In one of the film's most infamous scenes, Cookie and Crackers have sex while crushing a live chicken between them as Cotton looks on through a window. Cookie then informs the Marbles about Babs' real identity, her whereabouts, and her family -- as well as her upcoming birthday party. The Marbles send a box of human feces to Divine as a birthday present with a card addressing her as "Fatso" and proclaiming themselves "the filthiest people alive". Worried her title has been seized, Divine declares whoever sent the package must die. While the Marbles are gone, Channing dresses in Connie's clothes and imitates his employers' overheard conversations. When the Marbles return home, they are outraged to find Channing mocking them, so they fire him and lock him in a closet. The Marbles arrive at the trailer to spy on Divine's birthday party. Her birthday gifts include poppers, fake vomit, lice shampoo, a pig's head, and a meat cleaver. Entertainers include a topless woman with a snake act and a contortionist who flexes his prolapsed anus in rhythm to the song "Surfin' Bird". The Egg Man, who delivers eggs to Edie daily, confesses his love for her and proposes marriage. She accepts his proposal and he carts her off in a wheelbarrow. Disgusted by the outrageous party, the Marbles call the police, but this backfires when Divine and her guests ambush the officers, hack up their bodies with the meat cleaver, and eat them. Divine and Crackers head to the Marbles' house, where they lick and rub the furniture, which excites them so much that Divine fellates Crackers. They find Channing and discover two pregnant women held captive in the basement. After Divine and Crackers free the women with a large knife, the women use the knife to emasculate Channing offscreen. The Marbles burn Divine's beloved trailer to the ground. When they return home their furniture -- cursed by being licked by Divine and Crackers -- "rejects" them: when they try to sit down, the cushions fly up and throw them to the floor. They also find that Channing has bled to death from his emasculation and the two girls have escaped. After finding the remains of their burned-out trailer, Divine and Crackers return to the Marbles' home, kidnap them at gunpoint, and bring them to the arson site. Divine calls the local tabloid media to witness the Marbles' trial and execution. Divine holds a kangaroo court and convicts the bound-and-gagged Marbles of "first-degree stupidity" and "assholism". Cotton and Crackers recommend a sentence of execution, so the Marbles are tied to a tree, coated in tar and feathers, and shot in the head by Divine. Divine, Crackers, and Cotton enthusiastically decide to move to Boise, Idaho, site of a homosexual scandal from 1955 to 1957.Gerassi, John, with introduction by Peter Boag (1966, reprinted 2001). The Boys of Boise: Furor, Vice and Folly in an American City.. University of Washington Press. Spotting a small dog defecating on the sidewalk, Divine scoops up the feces with her hand and puts them in her mouth -- proving, as the voice-over narration by Waters states, that Divine is "not only the filthiest person in the world, but is also the world's filthiest actress". 

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The Chalet School is founded in 1925 by Madge Bettany when her brother has to return to his job in the Forestry Commission in India. She comes to the conclusion that starting a school would be a convenient way to generate some much-needed income, while also looking after her infirm younger sister Joey. Finding that suitable locations in England would be too expensive for her plans, she decides to look abroad, and finally settles on a large chalet in the Austrian Tyrol, conveniently providing a helpful climate for Joey's recuperation. Within a few years a sanatorium is built not far from the school, where tuberculosis patients convalesce. The founder, Dr Jem Russell, along with Dr Jack Maynard, provides assistance to members of the school and the two Doctors eventually marry Madge and Joey respectively. Robin Humphries is also a main character, until she leaves the Chalet school to go to Oxford and later becomes a nun. The books then follow a variety of characters, including Daisy Venables, Bride Bettany and Gay Lambert, until Mary-Lou Trelawney comes to the school, and becomes the main character for several books. After she leaves school, in the later books, Joey's triplets become main characters. Throughout the series, various girls arrive at the school with personal problems, bad attitudes or behavioural issues. As a result of the ministrations of better-behaved classmates and the school mistresses, they tend to discover the error of their ways and become model pupils. This formula of a troublesome new girl who reforms and conforms is most common in the later books. 

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A former astronaut is hired by a detective agency to help in an investigation of a case of mysterious deaths. Several victims became mad and committed suicide during their vacation in various Naples spas, apparently without reason. Due to certain similarities in the circumstances of the deaths the case is assumed to be a serial murder by poisoning, although it is never certain what (if any) real connection exists between the victims. During the investigation, it becomes apparent that certain innocent chemicals can be combined into a strong depressor, a kind of chemical weapon. The hero experiences its effects, but his training helps him to survive and solve the case. He discovers the industrial sources of the chemicals, and demonstrates how random chance chemical reactions led to the string of deaths. 

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At a base on Saturn's moon Titan, a young spaceship pilot Parvis sets out in a strider (a mecha-like machine) to find several missing people, among them Pirx (the spaceman appearing in Lem's Tales of Pirx the Pilot). Parvis ventures to the dangerous geyser region, where the others were lost. Unfortunately, he suffers an accident. Seeing no way to get out of the machine and return to safety, he triggers a built-in cryogenic device. An expedition is sent to a distant star in order to make first contact with a civilization that may have been detected. It is set more than a century after the prologue, when a starship is built in Titan's orbit. This future society is described as globally unified and peaceful with high regard for success. During starship preparations, the geyser region is cleared, and the frozen bodies are discovered. They are exhumed and taken aboard, to be awakened, if possible, during the voyage. However, only one of them can be revived (or more precisely, pieced together from the organs of several of them) with a high likelihood of success. The identity of the man is unclear; it has been narrowed to two men (whose last names begin with 'P'). It is never revealed whether he is in fact Pirx or Parvis (and he seems to have amnesia). In his new life, he adopts the name Tempe. The explorer spaceship Eurydika (Eurydice) first travels to a black hole near the Beta Harpiae to perform maneuvers to minimize the effects of time dilation. Before closing on the event horizon, the Eurydice launches the Hermes, a smaller explorer ship, which continues on to Beta Harpiae. Closing in on the planet Quinta which exhibits signs of harboring intelligent life, the crew of the Hermes attempts to establish contact with the denizens of the planet, who, contrary to the expectations of the mission's crewmen, are strangely unwilling to communicate. The crew reaches the conclusion that there is a Cold War-like state on the planet's surface and throughout the planetary system, halting the locals' industrial development. The crew of Hermes assumes that the Quintan civilisation is inevitably doomed to collapse in Mutual assured destruction. They try to force the aliens to engage contact by means of an event impossible to hide by the aliens' governments: staging the implosion of their moon. Surprisingly, just before impact, several of the deployed rockets are destroyed by missiles of the Quintans, undermining the symmetry of the implosion which causes fragments of the moon to be thrown clear, some impacting the planet's surface. However, even this cataclysm does not drive the locals to open up to their alien visitors, so the crewmen deploy a device working as a giant lens or laser, capable of displaying images (but also concentrating beams to the point of being a powerful weapon) and following a suggestion by Tempe, show the Quintans a "fairy tale" by projecting a cartoon onto Quinta's clouds. At last, the Quintans contact the Hermes and make arrangements for a meeting. The humans do not trust the Quintans, so to gauge the Quintans' intentions they send a smaller replica of the Hermes — which is destroyed shortly before landing. The humans retaliate by firing their laser on the ice ring around the planet, shattering it and sending chunks falling on the planet. Finally, the Quintans are forced to receive an 'ambassador', who is again Tempe; the Quintans are warned that the projecting device will be used to destroy the planet if the man should fail to report back his continued safety. After landing, Tempe discovers that there is no trace of anyone at the landing site. After investigating a peculiar structure nearby, he scouts around and finds a strange-looking mound, which he opens with a small shovel. To his horror, he notices that in his distracted state he has allowed the allotted time to run out without signaling his crewmates above. As the planet is engulfed by fiery destruction at the hands of those who were sent to establish contact with its denizens, Tempe finally realizes what the Quintans are: the mounds. However, he has no time to share his discovery with the others. 

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